CLEMSON — Clemson was hoping to prove last week’s week-long cross-country trip to California would not affect its return home against Virginia Tech on Wednesday.
Unfortunately for the 20th-ranked Tigers, it did.
Though head coach Brad Brownell did not want to use tired legs and jetlag as an excuse, it was obvious the Tigers were flat and seemed fatigued, both physically and mentally, at times in their 76-66 loss to the Hokies at Littlejohn Coliseum.
“We definitely looked that way, but I wouldn’t say that had anything to do with it,” Clemson forward Nick Davidson said. “It was just one of those games where we got off to a slow start. We kind of got activated too late and you can’t do that with a good team like this.”
Davidson scored 16 points in the loss, as did guard Ace Buckner. Carter Welling’s 19 points led the team.
The loss ended Clemson’s four-game win streak and sours Saturday’s trip to No. 4 Duke (22-2, 11-1 ACC) a little, where first place in the ACC will be on the line.
Clemson (20-5, 10-2 ACC) is one game back of the Blue Devils for first place in the conference.
“It’s a big game. Really every game for us (is big),” Davidson said. “We’re all new to the ACC. There are no games that we take lightly especially all of us guys from mid majors. We dream to play teams like Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, we dropped the ball tonight.
“Duke is another one of those that we dreamed to play against, and we have the opportunity on Saturday.”
Question: They were hitting a bunch of shots. Do you feel like those were possibly missed assignments?
Davidson: “That was just a good team with good players making good plays. Maybe we could do a little more to disrupt certain things to make it a little more difficult, but they hit some great shots.”
Question: What was the message from Coach (Brownell) at halftime?
Davidson: “Pick it up. We’re so much better than this. And I really feel like we did. It’s just a bummer that we dug ourselves that big of a hole in the first half. Hard to crawl back.”
Question: They were moving the ball around a ton. What was hard to guard about Virginia Tech defensively tonight?
Davidson: “We struggled with certain pick-and-roll coverages. They had some guards that were able to get our guards into hostages. I’m not saying that’s on our guards. A lot of us bigs need to help them to get up to touch more. That’s stuff we know and we’re going to continue to work on, but they just seemed to capitalize on it.”
Question: You guys are such a mature team. What gives you the confidence that you’ll be able to reset after a game after this?
Davidson: “We’ve done it before. We dropped Bama and BYU and then went on a little bit of a run. We dropped NC State and then went on a little bit of a run. This is part of the game, and we’ve all been here before and we know we can do it.”