Rested and ready to go.
Clemson’s week off came at the right time, before the start of February, giving Brad Brownell and his group enough time to gain some fresh legs ahead of a massive week.
Following the win over NC State, Brownell addressed the media on Monday’s ACC coaches call to break down what’s next, the focus ahead of Duke, and much more.
*On the week off:
The rest came at the right time.
Clemson experienced some opposition during Saturday’s win over NC State, but the group was able to weather the storm and come out of it with another win.
Brownell felt the week was needed and that veteran leadership was a major factor in not having a letdown on the road.
“Well, it was really good for that week,” Brownell said. “Our team, sometimes when you’re playing as well as we were playing, you just want to keep playing games. You don’t want time off. But I could tell our guys we were starting to run on fumes a little bit, and really, we poured it all into the Virginia Tech game, and then we took Sunday and Monday off and, rarely, you’d ever take two days off in a row, especially during the season. So I think our guys appreciated it, had a good practice on Tuesday, and gave them Wednesday. And so, to get three days that week where the guys don’t have much going on physically and mentally is good, but we got some experienced older guys who handled it very well. We had a good two-day prep on Thursday and Friday to prepare for state, and I thought we played pretty well on the road.”
*On efficiency against the Wolfpack:
It wasn’t a phenomenal shooting day for the Tigers on Saturday, but their greatest strength in that victory was the lack of turnovers. In 61 possessions, Clemson only coughed up five turnovers.
Brownell felt his team was very sharp for a team that hadn’t played a game in over a week.
“Good players making good decisions, which was significant in the game for sure,” Brownell said. “I thought we did a lot of good things. I thought Chase was really good and did a lot of good things in the pick and roll, and I just thought we were pretty sharp for a team that hadn’t played that week. We showed good poise, especially late in the game when things started getting hairy. I think that’s where having the older team is a big advantage. When you’re on the road, the other building gets a little bit loud, and your guys settle down and still run your stuff and get quality shots.”
*On the approach to handling the Duke game hype:
It goes without saying this is a massive week for Clemson.
The storylines don’t even begin and end with Duke. With a win over Georgia Tech on Tuesday (9 p.m./ACCN), the team will have its best start in program history and enter a matchup with the Blue Devils 11-1 in the ACC.
One of the themes that continued to reverberate in the call was Brownell’s praise of his veteran leadership, and he believes that build-up will come in handy for a week like this.
“You just hope there’s a mature approach,” Brownell said. “We talked about it yesterday. There’s certainly a lot of noise about everything, but there’s been noise about that game for the last two weeks around our program. I think our guys have done a really good job of staying focused on what’s next. And we know that Georgia Tech is a really good team. They came in here and beat us last year, got a lot of respect for Damon and how they’re playing right now. Those guys are playing extremely well. When you watch the Louisville game, I mean their last 20 minutes; they played it at an extremely high level. The first time we played ’em, they didn’t have Lance Terry. He’s their leading scorer. So we know that they’re a very dangerous, capable team. And that’s what’s so hard about all this is the Georgia Tech that we’re playing right now is certainly much better than the one that was playing in November and December, probably even January. And that’s what makes league games so challenging is teams improve, and teams get better. Damon’s done a good job with this group, and they’re still playing with a ton of juice and energy. They have a lot of guys out on the floor that can hurt you.”
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