Clemson’s men’s basketball team continued its winning ways Wednesday, setting the stage for one of the more anticipated games left on its schedule.

The Tigers topped Louisville for an 83-70 win at Littlejohn Coliseum. Clemson (14-3, 6-0 ACC) has won its first six ACC games for the first time in program history, maintaining its position atop the ACC standings in the process ahead of its Quad 1 opportunity Saturday against No. 24 Duke.

“We’re in a very good groove right now,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said.

Clemson first had to avoid a potential landmine on its postseason resume in Louisville (2-15, 0-6), which came into Wednesday’s game sitting in the ACC cellar with a NET ranking of 344. The Cardinals made a few late pushes and got as close as six points with less than 3 minutes left, but Clemson prevailed thanks to another strong outing from Hunter Tyson and some other contributions to balance it out.

Tyson led all scorers with 28 points and pulled down 11 more rebounds, giving him his fifth straight double-double. He scored 16 of those points in the second half, including a 3-point answer to Kamari Lands’ trey ball that cut Clemson’s lead to 72-66 with 2:51 remaining.

The Tigers, which shot 52.8% from the field, made four of their final five shots and maintained a lead of at least three possessions the rest of the way.  Chase Hunter had 13 points and seven rebounds while Brevin Galloway chipped in 10 points for the Tigers on a night when PJ Hall played just 17 minutes while being saddled with foul trouble.

Clemson also shot 19 of 23 from the free-throw line and scored 18 points off 15 Louisville turnovers.

“We’ve done a really good job working hard every day, treating every day as a new opportunity to get better and just really trying to take care of business every time we step on the floor,” Tyson said. “And I think if we just continue to take it one day at a time, we can continue to have this success.”

Hall still contributed 10 points despite not scoring his first bucket until the 7:44 mark of the second half. The Tigers’ junior big played just seven minutes in the first half after picking up two early fouls. Clemson trailed by as many as nine points midway through the opening 20 minutes, but Tyson and the Tigers’ backcourt helped picked up the slack.

“Obviously we got in a little bit of foul trouble in the second half, but Hunter was terrific,” Brownell said. “I thought our bench in the first half was really good and really gave us some juice when we started off a little bit slow.”

Tyson stayed hot, knocking down four of his first seven shots en route to 12 first-half points. Along with Galloway’s eight first-half points and Hunter’s seven, the Tigers ripped off an 11-0 run to take their first lead with 8:50 left in the first half. Clemson took a 40-28 lead into the break by outscoring the Cardinals 22-12 the rest of the half.

“Once we got into the flow of the game, we started getting stops and were able to get some easy buckets in transition,” Tyson said. “I think that’s what really started our run.”

Louisville, led by Mike James’ 17 points, sank five of its nine 3-pointers in the second half to give the Tigers a run late, but Clemson held the Cardinals to 40% shooting.

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