That clanging noise heard inside Cassell Coliseum at Virginia Tech Wednesday night was the sound of 26 missed three-point attempts by Clemson shooters in a 70-58 loss to Virginia Tech. The Tigers were 9-35 behind the arc, the 35 attempts and 26 misses setting season highs. The Tigers fall to 15-14 overall and 9-10 in the ACC with their second loss of the season to the Hokies.
Inside the Clemson loss to Virginia Tech
- Virginia Tech led 30-25 at the half. Clemson took a the lead for the last time at 42-41 on a Tevin Mack jumper with 13:59 to play. But the Hokies then rolled off an 18-3 run for a 60-44 lead with 8:37 left, and the Tigers got no closer than 12 the rest of the way.
- Clemson shot 35% for the game while Virginia Tech was red-hot in the second half shooting 59%, and 54% for the game. The Hokies were 12-26 from three.
- Mack was Clemson’s only double figure scorer with 12. Leader scorer Aamir Simms managed just 5 points, his second straight sub-par offensive showing. He had 5 points in the win over Florida State.
- PJ Horne hit 4 three-pointers and led Virginia Tech with 17 points.
- Clemson has a quick turn-around with Senior Night Friday night against Georgia Tech.
- Final Stats
Quotes from Clemson coach Brad Brownell
Opening statement:
“Congratulations to Virginia Tech. I thought they played great tonight. We played very poorly, certainly some of that is because of the way they played, and some of it I thought was because our energy level for whatever reason was very low. Our communication was very poor, and for whatever reason mentally we weren’t in the game, and we didn’t recover. I thought we played soft on both ends. This is one of our poorer performances of the season. Again, I think Virginia Tech had a lot to do with it. They played outstanding, confident, great pace, ran their stuff well, made shots, the energy of the crowd helped, but I’m disappointed in the way we played and
coached today. We did a bad job.”
On Clemson’s defense in the second half:
“I thought our defense was terrible. We talked about it at halftime, we thought it was very average in the first half. In the second half, our guys just didn’t compete very hard. Once they made a couple of shots, we just gave into it. Again, they ran their stuff great, their kids made big time shots, they played well, and we did not respond to being punched in the mouth. They punched us in the mouth, and we just took it and didn’t compete tonight.”
