Clemson men’s basketball (13-4, 4-1 ACC) bounced back from a midweek loss at Louisville to defeat the Florida State Seminoles (11-5, 2-3 ACC) by a 77-57 final score on Saturday afternoon at Littlejohn Coliseum. Chase Hunter’s 25 points led the way for the Tigers, knocking down five threes and shooting 8-of-14 from the field.
“We played really well today,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “We practiced hard the last couple of days, and it’s good to see [our team] rewarded for that.”
Junior forward Chauncey Wiggins and graduate student Jaeden Zackery added 12 and 15 points, respectively to help out the Tigers’ offense. CU shot 13-for-28 (46%) from three-point range, while Florida State hit just four of their 16 attempts from deep (25%).
Zackery might have been the unsung hero of the game, chipping in 3 rebounds, 3 assists, plus a steal. Two of his three rebounds were offensive, giving Clemson extra possessions.
Clemson’s defense was on full display throughout the game, holding Florida State star guard Jamir Watkins to just six points on the afternoon. Following his second three-pointer of the first three minutes, Watkins taunted the Clemson student section, and was met with a chorus of boos every time he touched the ball for the rest of the game.
The boos continued, but the scoring did not. Watkins finished with just 11 points while shooting just 3-for-12 from the floor.
“We prepared hard with our defense the last couple of days. I didn’t think we guarded as well against Louisville as we would’ve liked. [Against Watkins], we did a nice job, and obviously the crowd was helpful. He’s a terrific player. He beats you in a lot of different ways. We did a good job of trying to make it hard on him as much as we could. He just didn’t get a rhythm, and that happens to players [in] some games.”
Florida State was able to make a push midway through the second half, cutting the Clemson lead to 12 with 7:56 remaining.
It was the Tigers, though, who answered back emphatically down the stretch. A 12-3 run over the next 3:38 widened the gap and gave Clemson a comfortable victory.
The crescendo of the run was a Dillon Hunter chasedown block on Florida State’s Daquan Davis, leading to Zackery’s three pointer that stretched the lead to 73-52 with 3:05 to play.
Tigers guard Del Jones, leading the second unit at guard, chipped in nine points on a trio of three-pointers. Brownell deployed smaller lineups several times throughout Saturday’s contest, and Jones made the most of his opportunity.
“[With Del] it’s not easy,” Brownell said. “He doesn’t know if he’s going to play 15 minutes, five minutes, or three minutes. There’s been a couple of games where he’s gone in, Stanford in particular, where he really wasn’t ready mentally. I think it’s hard sometimes for guys that are used to playing almost all of the game their whole life, and then all of a sudden you don’t know if you’re playing five minutes, 15 minutes. Sometimes you get caught off guard and you’re not really ready. He wasn’t ready and he didn’t play well. He really responded against Cal. He and I met and talked about it a little bit.
I told him leading into today’s game that I thought this was a game that his speed on both ends of the floor would be valuable. He needed to take advantage of his opportunity and be ready.”
Big man Viktor Lakhin was mired in foul trouble for much of the game, leading to Brownell’s usage of Ian Schieffelin and Chauncey Wiggins as the de facto center in lineups.
“That smaller lineup was working”, Brownell said. “We kind of didn’t go back to [center Christian Reeves], really through no fault of his own. We’ve got to evaluate game-to-game, what’s good for each guy and how much they can handle.”
