Clemson basketball moves to 8-0 with win over South Carolina. Are the Tigers legit?

Consider not just the fact the Clemson men’s basketball team is 8-0 but how, exactly, the Tigers have put together their best start to a season in 16 seasons.

An 18-point comeback win over Davidson.

The second road win in program history against a ranked non-conference team, No. 23 Alabama (which also happened to be on a 19-game home winning streak).

A Sunday win at Pittsburgh, which made the NCAA Tournament last year.

And now an 11-point comeback win over undefeated South Carolina, the Tigers’ biggest rival, in front of a capacity crowd at Littlejohn Coliseum, fans who spent the first half patiently waiting to explode and finally got an opportunity to in the second.

The Tigers are ranked No. 24 in the country. They’re 8-0 for the first time since 2008-09. And after Wednesday’s 72-67 win over the Gamecocks, in the first ever meeting between those schools with both undefeated this late in the year, they’re continuing to win in different ways.

A recipe for March?

Coach Brad Brownell correctly points out it’s “a long season ... very long.” As for what he’s learned about the Tigers, though? Plenty that indicates success in the short and long term this season for a Clemson team that may not have the prettiest wins … but still doesn’t have a loss.

“I know we’re resilient,” Brownell said. “We’ve hung in there. And we played with pretty good poise in the second half of a lot of close games. … We’ve had a really hard week and a half, but that’s going to the ACC season: high-major game after high-major game.”

Clemson went 23-10 last season, ranked as high as No. 19, was one of the best stories in the ACC and had a program-record 14 conference wins in the regular season.

But the Tigers were still among the first four teams out of last season’s 68-team March Madness field, on account of some unsightly Quadrant 3 and 4 losses as determined by the all-important NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, and a blowout loss in the ACC Tournament semifinals.

It’s hard to ask a team to win every big game and avoid every bad loss in a college basketball season that runs over 30 games. Through early December, Brownell’s squad has made it happen and appeared in the AP Top 25 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2017 and 2018 because of it.

Taking down a rival

Take Wednesday’s game, a matchup of two of the only 14 remaining unbeaten teams in Division I basketball. Clemson had a line of hundreds of students snaking around the corner of Littlejohn Coliseum and the Palmetto Bowl trophy – secured two weekends ago with the football team’s road win at South Carolina — and one of its peppiest crowds in years.

And then, a putrid first half. The Tigers had 23 points in the first 20 minutes — comfortably a season low — and ended the half having not scored in 7:39 of game time. Even against a South Carolina team that takes pride in its defense under coach Lamont Paris, that’s hard to do.

Nobody outside of preseason All-ACC center PJ Hall and Syracuse transfer Joe Girard III could buy a bucket, it seemed, and postgame Hall was still cringing at the layups he himself blew as a revved-up Clemson team shot 9 for 29, 2 for 8 on 3-pointers and turned it over six times.

“Bunnies,” Hall said, cringing.

But the Tigers made the very simple halftime adjustment (non-adjustment?) of sticking with it, and fortunes started changing — in a way they didn’t in last season’s rivalry game, a last-second Quadrant 4 road loss to the Gamecocks that Clemson could never really shake from its résumé.

Clemson’s 49 second-half points more than doubled the Tigers’ first half output (23), its other starters started pulling their weight and one of the most experienced rosters in college basketball (the only teams with more returning points per game among players are TCU and Arkansas) shook off a pesky USC team that’s making some waves of its own.

“With our core group … we have four guys who are upperclassmen,” Hall said. “So having that experience down the stretch is huge. We stay calm, stay poised. We’ve all played big games, bigger crowds than that. Joe has been to the Sweet 16. We just played in front of however many thousand at Alabama in a hostile environment. We’re built for this stuff.”

Added Paris: “That’s a good team. They earned their way into the Top 25.”

About halfway through the second half lanky big man Chauncey Wiggins had 13 points in that frame alone and hadn’t missed a shot. Bruising forward Ian Schieffelin, who Dabo Swinney has called the best would-be football player on the basketball roster, did what he did best — the dirty work — and had a personal 5-0 run to put Clemson up 59-56 with 4:53 remaining.

And on a night where Girard (12 points) and Hall (14) didn’t exactly fill it up like they’ve often done in their careers, guard Chase Hunter had the biggest shot of the night: a 3-pointer to put the Tigers up 65-59 with 1:52 remaining.

By the time Hall was shooting free throws with six seconds to go and a win secured, a packed student section was chanting “Who’s your daddy?” to the South Carolina bench and you never would’ve known the No. 24 team in the country was down 11 points in the second half at home.

That result — a Quad 1 win as of Wednesday that moved Clemson up to 17th in the NET — will slide in with the rest of them, right up there with two more Quad 1 wins (at Alabama, at Pitt) and a huge neutral-site comeback against Davidson in Asheville and wins in the sort of games that will bite you in March as losses.

Instead, Clemson’s winning them. So far.

“Our team is really good and efficient offensively, or has been most nights,” Brownell said. “Tonight, not as good. We’ve got to get better at some things for sure. But certainly very pleased. And they’re an unbelievably fun group to be around.”

Next four Clemson games

• Saturday: vs. TCU (in Toronto), 4 p.m. (FS1)

• Dec. 16: at Memphis, 3 p.m.

• Dec. 22: vs. Queens, 6 p.m. (ACC Network)

• Dec. 29: vs. Radford, 7 p.m. (ACC Network Extra)