CLEMSON — After three rather easy tune-up wins at home, the Clemson basketball team hit the road for the first time this weekend against its first quality opponent of the season.

The Tigers’ new-look team held up well for the most part, but ultimately fell 79-74 to Georgetown in Washington, D.C.

“Our first real game against somebody with this kind of competitive spirit and ability,” head coach Brad Brownell said. “They run really good stuff, get the ball to good places, get their best players good action to make them successful.”

While Brownell was happy with the level of compete, he didn’t think his team did enough defensively in the second half to beat a team of the caliber of the Hoyas.

After outscoring Georgetown by three points in the second half, the Tigers were outscored by eight points in the final half of play. The Hoyas shot 32 free throws, hitting on 25 of them, while Clemson was just 14-of-20 from the charity stripe.

“I thought my guys really competed,” Brownell said. “The first time being in a difficult environment against a physical, competitive team that does so many different things, and for the most part, they handled a lot of it pretty well. It just wasn’t quite good enough, especially defensively, to slow them down and win a game.”

“We just could not quite get them stopped in the second half. I was very disappointed with our defense in the second half. I thought our kids played pretty hard. We got some young players and some guys from high mid-major basketball that got some exposure against some high-level play. And in the second half we just weren’t quite tough enough and disciplined enough when the defense was away from our bench to get the stops necessary to win a game like this.”

With so many new faces on this year’s team, getting the players to gel has been a slow process. The Tigers not only feature six transfers who were not on last season’s team, but Brownell is also relying on two true freshmen and one redshirt freshman to contribute.

Two of those transfers, Nick Davidson and Carter Welling, combined for 27 points in the loss, and Clemson also won the battle on the boards 36-35. The Tigers also outworked the Hoyas on the offensive glass 11-6.

While it might not have been enough to pick up the win, Brownell is still pleased with the progress his team has made early on.

“It is a lot right now,” Brownell said. “Obviously, we have 10 new players. We have six freshmen. We just have a lot of new people. I joked to our media at home that we have two-page practice plans and we seldom get to the back page. We have to stop and teach and coach. We think we understand something and we really don’t quite understand it.”

“We have been very fortunate the last three years with older teams with guys that have been in our program for four years. All conference players. And now we are just kind of rebuilding a little with some different guys and it is a little slower going.”

Clemson (3-1) returns to action on Monday night, as the Tigers will host North Alabama inside Littlejohn Coliseum. Tipoff is at 9 p.m. and the game will be streamed on ACCNX.