Clemson’s longest losing streak in five years on the hardwood continued Saturday, but that wasn’t the biggest story to develop for the Tigers inside the KFC Yum! Center.
Sophomore big PJ Hall exited the game with a left foot injury less than two minutes into Clemson’s game at Louisville. The Tigers used a game-high 18 points from Al-Amir Dawes to stay close, but without their leading scorer and second-leading rebounder, they couldn’t avoid their sixth straight loss in a 70-61 setback.
Hall was averaging 16 points and six boards going into Saturday’s game despite dealing with inflammation in that left foot for much of the season. The 6-foot-10, 240-pounder’s practice time has been limited during the latter part of the season in an effort to get him feeling as good as possible heading into game days.
“He’s our No. 1 option,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
But Hall played just 1 minutes, 7 seconds Saturday before aggravating the injury, Brownell said afterward. Naz Bohannon subbed in for him, and Hall went to the locker room for evaluation. He never returned.
Still, Clemson (12-15, 4-12 ACC) rallied from a nine-point deficit early in the second half to tie the game at 45 on a basket from Bohannon with 10:35 left. The Tigers took a 53-52 lead a few minutes later on a 3-pointer from Dawes, who paced Clemson’s 43% shooting performance by going 6 of 11 from 3-point range. His fifth trey cut Louisville’s lead to one a couple of minutes later, but the Cardinals scored the next five points to spark a 13-5 run to end the game.
Bohannon scored 11 points in a season-high 34 minutes to help Clemson offset Louisville’s advantage on interior without Hall. The Tigers only finished minus-3 in rebounding (33-36) and minus-2 in points in the paint (32-34), but Chase Hunter (10 points) was the only other Clemson player to score in double figures.
“Proud of the effort my team gave tonight,” Brownell said. “Thought we competed exceptionally hard and got the game late into the second half with a chance. Disappointed that we weren’t able to take it to the last minute. We needed to be able to get a couple more stops in the second half and needed to make a couple more plays, but I thought our guys played pretty aggressive. Thought we played pretty confidently, and I thought our team adjusted well to obviously losing PJ in the first minute.”
Pressed into more playing time, freshman center Ben Middlebrooks had four points and two rebounds in only 14 minutes after getting into foul trouble. Freshman forward Ian Schieffelin, getting his fourth straight start in the absence of Hunter Tyson, had seven points and four rebounds but also finished with four fouls.
“Now we’re getting limited in there,” Brownell said of his frontcourt. “We played (guard) David (Collins) at the (power forward) spot some today just to rest our guys, and we got into some foul trouble there with Ian and Ben.”
Noah Locke had a team-high 15 points for Louisville (12-14, 6-10), which shot nearly 46% from the field to snap its seven-game losing streak. The Cardinals also scored 19 points off 12 Tiger turnovers.
As for Clemson, it’s going through its most prolonged skid since also losing six straight conference games during the 2016-17 season. The Tigers will again try to end it Wednesday at home against Wake Forest.
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