By Will Vandervort.

It was surprising it even came to this, but Clemson senior Rod Hall made a driving layup with 1:17 left to play in overtime on Saturday to give the Tigers a six-point lead and to finally finish off a pesky Georgia Tech squad, 70-63.

The Yellow Jackets erased a 23-point lead at one point to force the extra period.

“We needed overtime to regroup. I tried to encourage them,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “We played well, we just had a bad spell at the end.”

But on Senior Day at Littlejohn Coliseum, when he was honored before and after the game for his contributions to the Clemson basketball program the last four years, Hall scored five points in the extra frame.

The senior point guard finished the game with 15 points and four assists in leading the Tigers to victory. Clemson improved to 16-12 and 8-8 in the ACC with the victory, while the Yellow Jackets dropped to 12-17 and 3-14 in the ACC.

“Our guys played well today. I hate that it ended in regulation the way it ended,” Brownell said. “Our first 20 minutes we played very well. The first twelve to fourteen minutes we played great.”

The Tigers will host NC State on Tuesday in the final regular season game at Littlejohn Coliseum. That game is set to tip off at 9 p.m.

Amazingly, Clemson never trailed in the game, despite it going into overtime. The Tigers opened the game by holding Tech without a field goal for the first 13 minutes and 56 seconds. They built a 26-4 lead at the time as Demarcus Harrison, who was also honored on Senior Day, and Jaron Blossomgame made key buckets during that stretch.

Harrison hit two three pointers early in the game to get the Tigers going.

“We had unbelievable energy. We made shots,” Brownell said. “Demarcus made a couple of threes early and we were aggressive. We really played well in the first half.”

Harrison and Hall both finished with 15 points. Blossomgame led the Tigers with 19 points and nine rebounds. Georgia Tech was led by Marcus Georges-Hunt’s 20 points.

Clemson took a 30-7 lead in the first half when Harrison made two free throws with4:59 to play.

“I talked to our guys about the last time we had a big lead against Virginia Tech and I really got on them at halftime because I could sense that we were not going to approach the second half the same way we needed to,” Brownell said.”They came out in the second half and built momentum. I asked them if I needed to do that again today and they said, ‘No Coach. We are good.'”

But the Tigers let that 23-point lead slip away as Georges-Hunt led a second half charge by Georgia Tech that allowed the Yellow Jackets to force overtime with the game tied at 60.

“The things to do for them to get back in it was offensive rebounds and turnovers for points. What do we give up — offensive rebounds and turnovers for points,” Brownell said. “That was by the first timeout. I had to call a timeout just two minutes in and that gave Tech momentum.”

The Yellow Jackets’ Heath made a three pointer from the left side with 1:21 to play and then Georges-Hunt stole a pass to cut the lead to four points. After two Harrison free throws upped the lead back to six, Georges-Hunt made a layup to cut the lead back to four and then stole another pass and scored to cut the lead two points, 60-58, with 57 seconds left in regulation.

Heath then made two free throws with 39 seconds left to force the extra period.

Clemson had a chance to win the game in the final seconds, but Hall turned the basketball over with three seconds to play.

Donte Grantham, who turned the ball over three times in the final minutes of regulation, redeemed himself by making a jumper on Clemson’s first overtime possession to give the Tigers the lead once again and then the defense took over from there as the Tigers outscored the Jackets 10-3 in the overtime period.

Clemson held the Yellow Jackets to the second lowest total for points in a half in the Brownell era with a 35-16 lead at halftime.

Georgia Tech was just 4 of 24 from the field in the opening 20 minutes and did not make its first field goal until the 6:04 mark of the half. It missed its first 14 shots.

The Tigers used that to their advantage on the offensive end, building a 26-4 lead on a Hall three-point play with 6:28 to play. Clemson was 11 of 22 in the opening half as Harrison scored 11 of his 15 points and Blossomgame contributed with eight points. Hall also had eight points.

Clemson led by as much as 23 points in the first half, which Harrison ended with two free throws after being fouled with 0.6 seconds to play.