By Will Vandervort.

Getting a week off probably could not have come at a better time for the Clemson men’s basketball team.

Following last Saturday’s 22-point loss at Duke, the Tigers find themselves in the midst of their worst slump of the season. After being in the NCAA Tournament conversation thanks to a four-game winning streak at the end of January, the Tigers are now just trying to stay afloat after losing four of their last five games.

“It is probably good for our team. We are licking our wounds,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “We have not played as well in the last week or so. We probably needed a little time off, but I’m also anxious to get back in the gym and get working here again.

“Obviously when the season gets going, you play in waves and we have played well at times. But we are in a little bit of a down cycle and we have to play better this week against a Georgia Tech team that is playing good basketball.”

The Tigers (15-12, 7-8 ACC) have only played well once in the last two weeks and that was in their 21-point win over Virginia Tech on Valentine’s Day. Since then, Clemson has shown no love to its fans at all in disappointing losses at Georgia Tech and at Duke.

The offense is struggling as Clemson ranks near the bottom in the ACC in scoring and field goal percentage. The Tigers are averaging just 62 points a game and shooting just 41 percent from the field.

“We have to get better offensively and we have to figure out some ways to score,” Brownell said. “We are having a hard time scoring. We don’t shoot the ball that well so we are going to get a bunch of shots up this week. That will be good for our guys to make sure they are getting in the gym and working on their shooting.”

Clemson will not play again until Saturday when it hosts Georgia Tech at Littlejohn Coliseum starting at noon. It’s a six-day break in between games and Brownell plans to use them as an opportunity to get back to the basics.

“It’s a chance to get back into some fundamentals,” he said. “Sometimes you do so much game prepping that when you have a week (off) it is good to go back and do some fundamental things whether screening and executing the screen better on offense or decision making and some things like that.

“Defensively, it is rotating on ball-screen stuff. I think we will get back to some fundamental practices here for a couple of days and then as the week gets going a little more we will start concentrating on Georgia Tech.”

But with three games left in the regular season, including two at home, the main goal this week is to get his players feeling good about themselves again. The Tigers can still earn a first-day bye in the ACC Tournament as they stand a half-game out of sixth place in the league standings. Pittsburgh, Miami and NC State are all 7-7 in ACC play. The five and sixth seeds in the ACC Tournament do not have to play until Wednesday, March 11.

Clemson already beat Pittsburgh, lost to Miami and has beaten NC State once with a second game between the two scheduled for March 3 in Littlejohn.

“We just have to make sure that our guys’ confidence is high. This is a week that I think we have to get our minds right by practicing our shooting and spending (a couple of days) working on some things,” Brownell said.