By John Falduto
After securing first place in the ACC with a comeback win over Pitt on Saturday, Clemson men’s basketball looks to go 6-0 in conference play for the first time in program history against Louisville (0-5, 2-14) at Littlejohn Coliseum on Wednesday night.
The red-hot Tigers come into the game as winners of five straight, leading the ACC in three-point percentage (39%), field goal percentage (54.3%), free-throw percentage (78.4%), and rank fifth in points-per-game at 75.4. Head coach Brad Brownell’s team is led by senior Hunter Tyson, who is averaging a double-double with 15.4 points and 10.0 rebounds per game, and a duo of juniors in Chase Hunter and PJ Hall, who average 14.6 and 12.5 points per game, respectively.
Louisville travels to Clemson in the midst of a 5-game losing streak, dropping each game by an average of 10.4 points during that stretch. First-year head coach Kenny Payne’s team is led by senior El Ellis, who ranks fourth in the ACC with 17.8 points per game, but the team as a whole ranks near the bottom of the ACC in nearly every major statistical category.
Clemson’s 5-0 start in conference play and 3-0 record in ACC road games thus far are the first since the 1996-97 season, when the Tigers finished with an overall record of 23-10 and 9-7 in ACC play and were ranked as high as No. 2 in the AP men’s basketball poll.
Following his team’s 75-74 win over Pitt in their last outing, Brad Brownell made it clear that his team won’t get complacent or caught up in their historic start: “We’re excited to be in important games and happy with how we’re playing, but there are fifteen games to go in the league,” he said. “There are a lot of good teams in the ACC, there are a lot of us that are figuring it out. Coaches are in the process of figuring it out. It’s going to be a long two months, but an exciting two months…We’re just trying to improve. We’re still tinkering with our team, our lineups, and how we’re trying to be successful, so we’re focusing on that.”
Tip-off at Littlejohn Coliseum is slated for 9:00 PM ET and will be broadcast on The Clemson Athletic Network - 105.5/97.5, theroarfm.com/listen or The ROAR App.
