Brownell says Tigers have to play better, shoot better, at home to change momentum |
Yes, Clemson has a chance to build positive momentum with two home games this week, but the Tigers also have to play better at home. And shoot better.
Clemson (13-6, 3-5 ACC) looks to shake off the tough loss at Duke with Louisville (6-14, 1-8) coming to town. Tipoff in Littlejohn Coliseum is set for 9:05 p.m. tonight with Wes Durham and Dan Bonner on the call for the ACC Network. Don Munson, Tim Bourret and Ben Milstead will broadcast the game on the Clemson Athletic Network. The Cards have lost five straight. Brownell was asked Monday if this opportunity to play just a few days after the Duke loss is a positive, as is the chance to play at home. “The answer on both those questions is to be determined, right? Obviously if we play well tomorrow night and get a win, then yeah, it's great that we got right back up on the horse,” Brownell said. “And hopefully we built some positive momentum, and let's get going again. And then the long-term question is, hey, we've lost two games at home. We have got to play better here. We have to shoot better here. We haven't shot the ball very well in our own building. And so, we've got to make more shots from the perimeter to help finish games and to finish our season the way we want to. So, I think really that's kind of to be determined on both those questions right now.” The Tigers could receive a boost with the return of shooting guard Alex Hemenway, who has missed a chunk of the season with an injury. Brownell termed Hemenway as “close” to being able to contribute. “We didn't do much yesterday, so it really wasn't a practice for him to participate in,” he said. “I know he got some skill work in with one of the assistant coaches. He's close. He hasn't been in very many things. He's been in two days of live practice, so we'll see. But yeah, he's getting close.” Clemson has a veteran presence with players like PJ Hall, Chase Hunter, and Joseph Girard III, and Brownell was asked if those veterans can help turn things around after a tough loss. “Again, some of that's to be determined. I'm optimistic. Yeah, when we've had a couple games get away from us at the end, one thing I've just tried to tell our team is I think we're playing better basketball than our ACC record,” Brownell said. “But we are what our record says we are. So we've got to get it fixed and win some games. But I do think in some of the games, we've played better defense against Georgia Tech and Duke for big portions of the game. We made a lot of winning plays in both games. We were very good offensively at the end of the Georgia Tech game. Obviously, the last couple of minutes we were not as good against Duke. Defensively, we had a couple miscues. “And so we've got to finish games better. But I do think there are points in the game where we are playing pretty good basketball, especially for a team that's not shooting it as well as we were, and sometimes that's ... The importance of shooting is clearly evident with our stats in the non-conference versus the conference right now. Just for whatever reason, we just haven't shot the ball as well. And we got to get that coming back to us.” Brownell said the team watched some of the Duke game but quickly moved on to Louisville. “We probably watched 25, 30 clips yesterday on the game for teaching. I'm just a big believer in that," Brownell said. “And so we address it head on: ‘Here's what we did well. Here's some things we have to do better. Here's some decisions we made that we can't be making. And here's some great plays with tremendous effort that helped our team have a chance to win the game.’ And so we did that yesterday first, and then we took a little break and came back, and then really got heavy into Louisville. But you've got to address it, you've got to learn from it, and you got to teach from it.”
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