By Will Vandervort.

Despite scoring 14 points and shooting 5 of 10 from the field in Clemson’s loss to South Carolina last Friday, Jaron Blossomgame felt that his effort was not good enough. He felt as if he could have done a little more to help his team.

The sophomore doesn’t want to feel that way again, and he made sure that was the case in the Tigers’ 70-60 victory over Oakland on Monday at Littlejohn Coliseum. Blossomgame scored a career-high 26 points on eight of 10 shooting, including three-of-three from three-point range.

“I have to do what I can to help win,” he said. “I feel like I get a lot of opportunities to score in our offense so I have to do that.”

Blossomgame did that on Monday by scoring 19 of his 26 points in the first half. At one point he tailed more than half of Clemson’s offensive production. He opened the game with a three-pointer and then just kept shooting and kept making shots from there.

“I have to have an attack mentality,” Blossomgame said. “I get a lot of open shots. I have a lot of opportunities in this offense to score and create – and that is to create off the dribble to get a shot or a pass so I have a lot of opportunities to succeed.”

When successful, Blossomgame helps open up the Tigers’ offense, which is what happened—though in stretches—against Oakland. With the Golden Grizzlies packing everything inside to prevent center Landry Nnoko from getting anything, Blossomgame took it upon himself to score since they were leaving him open.

“It helps a lot and it is critical that he continues to be able to make some shots,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “We said last year in some of our wins—Duke, Florida State on the road—some big wins, Jaron made multiple threes. I don’t know if he has to do that all the time, but it certainly keeps teams honest. It opens things up.”

It allowed Nnoko to total 17 points on 7 of 10 shooting and Donte Grantham to score 12 points.

“He did a good job offensively for us and even defensively,” Nnoko said. “He has been in the gym a lot shooting threes and all of that, and he came through for us today.”

Leading 27-22 following two Nnoko free throws, Blossomgame stole the ball and then hit a three-pointer to expand the lead to eight points with 2:43 to play in the half. A few moments later, he knocked down his third three in the opening 20 minutes to extend the advantage to 12 points.

“Jaron knows we have confidence in him and he has put in a ton of hard work,” Brownell said. “He probably has not seen the results of all of it with the shooting. I think he just needed to see a ball go in at South Carolina.

“He is a very emotional guy. He is a very emotional player so when he feels really good and things are going good, he can really gain confidence quickly, and you saw that with him when he was running into rhythm threes there at the end of the first half. I thought he played well having a mix to his game and not settling.”

The only thing Blossomgame settled for on Monday was finding different ways to score, while guiding his Tigers to a victory. His old-fashion three-point play on a layup and foul, allowed Clemson to put the game away with 2:06 to play.

“I have been consistent all season in scoring in double figures, but I’m just trying to win,” he said.