Joe Girard III scored a game-high 24 points on 8-for-11 shooting from the field to help lead No. 18 Clemson to a 93-58 victory over visiting Radford on Friday.
PJ Hall added 17 points for Clemson (11-1), which trailed for just 26 seconds in its second straight victory. Chase Hunter scored 16 points for the Tigers, while RJ Godfrey had 10. Ian Schieffelin grabbed 13 rebounds.
Kenyon Giles paced Radford’s scoring with 17 points and Chandler Turner poured in 11 for the Highlanders (10-5), who struggled from the onset. Their 23 first-half points were the fewest in a game this season, and trailed by 26 points at halftime.
Clemson opened the second half on a 12-4 run, punctuated with a Hall and-one layup to give the Tigers a 61-27 lead.
Clemson’s offense continued to dominate the rest of the way, taking its biggest lead, 82-39, on Godfrey’s jumper with 6:43 remaining.
Trailing by 91-50, the Highlanders finished the game on a modest 8-2 run en route to its fifth loss against the Tigers in as many tries.
In the first half, Giles knocked down a triple to give Radford a brief 3-2 lead, before Clemson raced to a 13-0 scoring run to take a 15-3 advantage at the 13:16 mark of the first half.
Giles scored the Highlanders’ first 12 points and 14 of their 23 half-points.
Clemson used an 18-2 run, including nine straight points by Girard, to take a 39-16 lead with 4:28 remaining. Clemson took its largest lead of the half on a Dillon Hunter triple at the first-half buzzer, as Chase found his brother for his sixth 3-pointer on the season.
Dillon Hunter’s shot gave Clemson a 49-23 lead at the half. Girard paced the Tigers’ first-half scoring with 17 points, while Hall added 12 and Chase Hunter had 11.
Both teams wrapped up their nonconference seasons Friday, with Radford hosting Big South rival High Point on Wednesday, and Clemson heading to Miami to take on the Hurricanes the same night.
–Field Level Media