CLEMSON — Brad Brownell does not want to be the mean coach who comes into the locker room following a 20-point win and makes his team feel bad.

However, Clemson’s head coach had to be that “negative guy” Monday night after the Tigers’ 81-61 victory over North Alabama at Littlejohn Coliseum.

“That is not what I am trying to do, but I am also a realist of what this means, and this is not acceptable,” Brownell said.

Brownell was right, Clemson’s performance in the second half against an inferior opponent was not acceptable. This is part of the reason why the Tigers lost at Georgetown over the weekend and it will cost them again, as early as this weekend, if they do not get it corrected against better competition.

“We are habit building whether we like it or not, good or bad,” Brownell said. “The second half was bad habit building.”

Clemson (4-1) played near flawlessly in the first half, as it jumped out to a 45-22 halftime lead. It made seven 3-pointers in the opening 20 minutes, made 50 percent of its shots overall, had eight offensive rebounds, 12 assists and just three turnovers.

But the Tigers, playing with a whole new roster this year, did not keep things up. As human nature does, sometimes, they let up. Brownell was not here for any of it.

He called a timeout less than two minutes into the second half after North Alabama quickly cut the Clemson lead to 17 points. At first Brownell lit into his players, then he went quiet, and let them stand there in silence for the rest of the timeout to think about things.

“We talked about a bunch of different things at halftime, and I guess they did not hear or want to hear,” Brownell said about the early second-half timeout. “It was a reminder that if you guys do not listen, this is what is going to happen.”

What happened is North Alabama cut the Tigers’ lead to as low as 14 points on several occasions with a chance to trim it even further. Clemson responded on the defensive end of the court, and it never happened. However, Brownell did not like the fact they put themselves in that position to begin with.

So, he had to be the negative guy.

“He is always going to be honest, and he is always going to say the real stuff,” said Clemson forward RJ Godfrey, who came off the bench to lead the Tigers with 16 points. “I love when he gets onto us like that, it kind of puts your antennas up and you go a little bit harder.”

Clemson cannot afford to let up this weekend in the Charleston Classic. It plays a West Virginia team on Friday night at the TD Arena that is 5-0 and then either Georgia or Xavier in the second game on Sunday.

The Bulldogs are also 5-0, while Xavier is 2-2.

“It is so hard to be good,” Brownell said. “The talent you have to have, and the maturity, and when you are as new as we are, that part of it makes it even more challenging. They do not really know how we do things and what all the expectations are.

“It is not as easy for us to fix things in game, as it was the last couple of years. So, when a game starts flipping on us, it is not as easy on us to flip it back and say ‘we are going to make this adjustment and this adjustment.’ We are going to try to make some, but…there was a time tonight when I was trying to say something and Carter (Welling) looked at me like I had three heads. I did not think it was that big of a deal, but he did not quite understand, so ‘scrap that then, we will have to do this.’”

Those are the kinds of things that are happening with the Tigers a little bit this year, where they cannot be as aggressive, at the moment, in fixing things. And that means letting up, even with a 20-point lead, is not a good habit.

So, for the time being, Brownell will have to be the mean coach that makes them feel bad after winning by 20 points.