By Will Vandervort.

Boston College head coach Jim Christian hopes his players can learn a thing or two from Brad Brownell’s Clemson program.

In his first year at Chestnut Hill, Christian is trying to a build a program that plays with relentless effort from opening tip until the horn sounds 40 minutes later. He wants his team to be known for something. He wants them to have an identity.

He wants them to be more like Clemson.

“They beat us to every loose ball, hurt us on the backboard, everything you know you have to do to be in the game with them and we didn’t do a good job of it,” Christian said following last Saturday’s loss to the Tigers. “I thought they played unbelievably well. Brad has done a phenomenal job here because those guys buy in so much to what they do. They believe so much into what they do.”

What Clemson does as well as anyone is play defense. Since giving up 74 point to North Carolina on Jan. 3, no team has scored more than 65 points on the Tigers and in their last six games no one has scored more than 59.

“At the end of the day you want your program to stand for something. You want to have an identity as a program and I think we are building that,” said Brownell, whose Tigers play at Miami (6:30 p.m.) today. “I think we have built the idea that defensively we will be hard to play against and we try not to beat ourselves.”

Using that formula, Clemson (14-8, 6-4 ACC) will be seeking its fifth straight ACC victory at Miami, something that has not happened since the 1989-’90 season.

“I just feel like we are playing with more passion and more energy and enthusiasm so it is just translating on the defensive end and it is helping us score points,” Clemson guard Jordan Roper said.

Not only have the Tigers’ held the opposition down in points, but with their shooting as well. During the four-game winning streak, Wake Forest, NC State, Boston College and Florida State have all been held under 40 percent from the field – the first time that has happened since the 1964 season.

“We have matured in that way,” Roper said. “We are not so much worried about hitting shots because we know that our identity is defense so we just hone in on our defense and we know the scoring will come.”

Brownell understands his team’s style of play may not be conducive to fans and the media because they want to see the basketball put in the basket as often as possible. However, he hopes those critics will step back and appreciate what his Tigers do well and how much effort they put into it.

“We would like to be better offensively? We keep working on that and I think we are improving as a team offensively, but at the end of the day your program does have to stand for something,” he said. “You have to have, not just core values, but a style that people embrace.

“If you really focus on how hard the kids play, the defensive attention to detail and the focus from that aspect, it takes a lot to do that and it builds a strong team camaraderie that I think we have had here through the years.”

And once again it has helped Clemson get back in the conversation of making a run at the NCAAs.

“We have some great players in this league, obviously, but that is just credit to out coaching staff,” Roper said. “They do an unbelievable job scouting other teams for us and it helps us out there on the floor whether we recognize a different set or a player’s tendency. It helps us tremendously out on the court.”