CHARLOTTE — When R.J. Godfrey laid the basketball up with 7:44 to play in the first half, No. 5 Clemson was right where it needed to be in Friday’s ACC Tournament Semifinal game against top-seeded Duke.

Despite not shooting the basketball all that well, the Tigers trailed No. 1 Duke by just a point. Their hopes of winning an ACC Tournament Championship for the first time was there for the taking. Unfortunately, those dreams were dashed by the end of those seven minutes and 44 seconds.

Clemson missed its last 10 shots to close the first half, which the Blue Devils took advantage of by going on a 22-4 run. The Tigers’ one-point deficit turned into a 19-point Duke lead by halftime and from there the Blue Devils cruised into the ACC Championship Game with a 73-61 victory at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C.

“As Coach (Brad Brownell) said, we tried to pepper the ball,” Godfrey said. “At the end of the first half, we were trying to play a lot of one-on-one, it did not work.”

It did not work.

Clemson (24-10) was dreadful in the opening half. The Tigers shot just 22 percent from the field.

They were just 6 of 27 from the field overall and 2 of 13 from three-point range, a complete contrast from the previous two tournament games when they were making everything while building big leads over Wake Forest and North Carolina.

“We didn’t have our best in the first half,” Brownell said. “I told my team some of that is on me. I don’t think that we had the best plan in place initially and didn’t do enough to help them in the first half.

“I thought we regrouped at halftime and played better, but Duke is very good. Obviously, their defense, we’ve played them twice, and it’s been hard for us to score against them.”

It also did not help that Clemson was playing its third game in three days, and all three games started after 9:30 p.m. However, the Tigers did not use any of that as a reason for their poor performance in the first half.

“I don’t think it played a role at all,” Godfrey said. “I think we took some bad (shots) in the first half early, and they took advantage of that. But I think the team came out with pretty good energy. I don’t think any of the guys were tired.”

Clemson did its best to try and come back. Twice it cut the Blue Devils’ lead to 12 points in the second half, but in each instance, Duke drained a 3-pointer or a couple of buckets and upped its lead back to 15 or more.

The Tigers outscored Duke (31-2) in the second half, 39-32, but the damage from the end of the first half was too much to overcome.

“Their pressure got to us,” forward Nick Davidson said. “We did not execute like we should have. We got to do better.”

Clemson will attempt to do better at next week’s NCAA Tournament. The Tigers will learn where and whom they are playing on Sunday evening.