Call Roy Williams impressed.
The North Carolina head coach was very complementary of Clemson’s basketball team following the Tar Heels’ 87-79 victory over the 18th-ranked Tigers in Chapel Hill, N.C., Tuesday.
“Brad (Brownell) has a very good club,” Williams said afterward. “We know we play them again in 12 days.”
However, as nice as that was for Williams to say, Clemson isn’t looking for moral victories anymore. The Tigers knew they had the team to end the long losing streak in Chapel Hill, which is now 0-59, and they know they squandered the opportunity.
Early in the game turnovers and missed open shots did the Tigers in as North Carolina built a 15-point halftime lead. Then Clemson got hot to start the second half, making 15 straight baskets at one point and were within two points, 66-64, with 6:17 to play in the game.
Then the Tigers (15-3, 4-2 ACC) went cold again, missing 11 of their final 15 shots to close the game. Clemson, one of the ACC’s best free throw shooting teams also missed seven of 21 foul shots, including a 4-for-10 effort in the opening half.
Defensively, again one of the best in the ACC, Clemson could not stop UNC (15-4, 4-2 ACC). The Tar Heels shot 51 percent from field overall, including 65 percent in the second half. They were also 15-of-31 from three-point range.
North Carolina’s 87 points were a season-high allowed by the Tigers and the first time an opponent scored 80 or more points on Clemson all year. Nine of the Tigers’ last 11 opponents failed to score 70 points.
Even despite his teams valiant second-half effort, in which they rallied from 18 points down to cut it two points on three separate occasions, Brownell was not looking for a moral victory.
“I don’t know if we are at the point where we need to be looking for those kinds of things,” he said. “You just go out and play. We have won enough games that we know we are a good team. We have to play really well to beat a team like North Carolina at North Carolina. That is just the way it is.”
Clemson point guard Shelton Mitchell said the Tigers’ early struggles were a result of thinking about the streak and how the program has never won in Chapel Hill.
“We got caught up in the moment,” he said. “I think some of us were trying too hard. We let our offense affect the way we played. Guys were missing shots and a lot of guys did not have good starts.
“I think once we started that we kind of got in a slump and then we dug ourselves a hole that was too deep.”
The Tigers started the game 8-for-25 from the field. Mitchell, along with Marcquise Reed and Donte Grantham, were a combined 0-for-13 from the floor with two points, on two Reed free throws.
Reed and Mitchell rallied in the second half to score a combined 37 of Clemson’s 56 second-half points. Reed was 7-of-9 from the field in the second half, while Mitchell was 6-for-7. The two also combined to go 7-of-7 from the charity stripe.
In the end none of that was good enough and getting a morale victory in Chapel Hill is not good enough anymore, either.
“At the outset we did not do anything to set a tone that we were a really good team coming in here to win,” Brownell said. “We just played that game and that was disappointing.”
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