Riding a three-game win streak, Clemson aims to add another victory to the pile while solidifying its NCAA Tournament resume on Saturday night when it hosts North Carolina State.
As of Friday, ESPN projects the Tigers (17-7, 7-6 Atlantic Coast Conference) to earn a No. 5 seed in the tournament as one of four ACC teams in the field. Clemson is 25th in the NCAA NET rankings and 28th in KenPom, both metrics that bode well for Brad Brownell’s team cracking the 68-team field for the first time since 2021.
Clemson has won five of its last seven games, and most recently notched a 77-60 home win over Miami on Wednesday. Chase Hunter poured in 20 points along with four assists on Valentine’s Day, while Joseph Girard III tallied 18 points and five assists.
PJ Hall had 13 points in the victory. He still leads the Tigers — and is second in the ACC in scoring this season — with 19.6 points per game.
Key for Clemson in its win over Miami was its defense, as it held the Hurricanes to 37.3 percent shooting from the floor. It marked the fourth time in ACC play that Clemson has held an opponent to under 40 percent shooting. The Tigers are 11-0 this season when their opponent shoots worse than 40 percent.
Brownell gives all the credit to the players for the Tigers’ recent surge.
“You’ve got to get stops and then your guys have to make basketball plays. You try to put them in some (favorable) positions,” Brownell said. “We’re helping them with some plays. There are certainly some actions and things we’ve taught them to help. But at the end of the day, they’ve got to execute.”
When it comes to forecasting the NCAA Tournament field, NC State (15-9, 7-6) is on the wrong side of the bubble. The Wolfpack have lost back-to-back games to fellow projected bubble teams Pitt and Wake Forest, and they don’t really have a signature win to point to aside from a Jan. 6 home victory over Virginia.
In NC State’s most recent loss — 83-79 last Saturday at Wake Forest — the Wolfpack were undone by committing 21 fouls, allowing the Demon Deacons 21 trips to the free-throw, where they made 17.
With no game during this past week, NC State coach Kevin Keatts looked at it as an opportunity to rest and refocus.
“I think the biggest thing is just trying to work on ourselves,” Keatts said. “We’ve had two really good games that we came up a little bit short, but we got to get some guys making some shots.”
DJ Horne leads the Wolfpack in scoring this season with 16.8 points per game.
Clemson swept NC State last season, beating the Wolfpack twice in the regular season and in Greensboro, N.C., at the ACC Tournament.
–Field Level Media