Donte Grantham knew he needed to say something.

After 20 minutes in which Clemson turned the basketball over several times, shot 30.4 percent from the field and were 1-for-10 from behind the three-point line the sophomore felt like the Tigers were not playing as hard as they could. At the time they were trailing Wake Forest, who had lost six straight games coming in, 28-20 at halftime.

“Usually I let the leaders like Jaron (Blossomgame), Rope (Jordan Roper) and Landry (Nnoko) say something, but something inside of me wanted to say something because I felt like we were not playing as hard as we could,” he said.

So Grantham, usually quiet and reserved, stood up in the middle of the locker room and told his teammates they were not playing up to their potential, himself included.

“I just made the speech and we just turned it on out of nowhere. Honestly, I’m surprised on how we were able to turn it on like that. It was wild,” Grantham said.

Clemson (14-8, 7-3 ACC) outscored the Demon Deacons 56-34 in the second half, while shooting 55.2 percent from the field. The Tigers connected on three of their seven three-pointers in the last 20 minutes, and were 21-of-23 at the foul line.

“Everyone was locked in,” Clemson guard Avery Holmes said. “We were kind of struggling at first. We were all together, but in the second half, Donte had a little speech, which was good and got us (fired) up. Everyone just started locking in and got it going.”

Blossomgame led the Tigers with a game-high 22 points, while Holmes added 17 points and Roper had 16. Grantham finished the game with 15 points and was 9-of-10 from the foul line.

“He just said, ‘I don’t really say that much, but we are not playing hard, including myself. We have big things going on right now so we need to win games,’” Holmes said about Grantham’s halftime speech. “That’s all he said. He said, ‘We just need to pick it up.’ Everyone was like, ‘We have to do that.’ And that’s how it went.”

The Tigers went on to win the game, 76-62. It was their seventh victory in the last nine games and their second road win in the ACC. They will hit the road again on Saturday when they play at Virginia Tech to end a three-game road stand.

Another road win in Blacksburg against the Hokies plus the fact it will host three straight home games against Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and Boston College, can put Clemson in position to start thinking about a possible NCAA Tournament bid.

“We all think about the tournament, but I feel like we are taking it one game at a time because in the ACC, as you have seen this year, any team is capable of upsetting any team,” Grantham said. “So we are taking it one game at a time, and like I said, we are trying to just leave it out there every game.”

Against Virginia Tech (12-11, 4-6 ACC) Grantham knows the Tigers cannot wait for a halftime speech to get things going or it might be too late at that point.

“I feel like for me, and our team, it kind of carries over to our practice. The mentality we have every day in practice kind of carries over into the game so I think guys just need to be locked in and ready for the game and kind of play angry. That’s what I call it,” Grantham said. “I just try to play angry and try to play aggressive, and do whatever we need to do to win the game.”