"Brutal ending": Brownell praises his team's resiliency in tough loss to Hokies

PJ Hall put together a big effort in a tough loss on Wednesday. (Photo: Brad Penner / USATODAY)

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Thu Mar 10 09:24:16 GMT-04:00 2022

Clemson’s basketball team entered the second round of the ACC Tournament on a five-game winning streak, and a ferocious second half comeback led to overtime. With just over six seconds remaining, the Tigers held a two-point lead and looked ready to advance, but Virginia Tech’s Darius Maddox drained a 3-pointer at the buzzer to end the Tigers’ season.

For head coach Brad Brownell, one word described the loss.

“Obviously brutal. Brutal ending. Just incredibly proud of the way our guys competed, not just tonight but throughout the season,” Brownell said. “A lot of adversity, and our guys just kept getting better and being coachable and working through things. We didn't play as well for a while tonight. I thought Virginia Tech was really good in the first half and controlled the game, but our guys just kept hanging in there and made some really good basketball plays at the end of the game.

“But give Virginia Tech credit; huge shot by Darius Maddox. They got a couple rebounds in the second half that hurt us that led to points, but certainly this is painful. I thought my guys played well enough at the end especially to win, and we didn't guard the last play very well, and they made a big shot. Congratulations to them.”

Wing Hunter Tyson, who returned from a broken clavicle to play in the final four games, called it heartbreaking.

“It was an amazing experience. We came here, and we had a pretty good plan, and we thought we were going to be able to go out and execute it and hopefully be here for a long week,” Tyson said. “Obviously it's heartbreaking seeing that shot go in, especially just because of how our guys fought. Man, I'm so proud of my teammates. We never really stopped believing, and I think that's why we were able to force the game into overtime. Didn't go our way at the end, so that's pretty heartbreaking, but overall the experience of just playing in obviously one of the best arenas in the world, it was a lot of fun.”

Brownell credited post player PJ Hall with wanting to return to the action despite tweaking his already-hurting foot. Hall played 33 minutes and scored a team-high 16 points.

“Tremendous character, toughness. He tweaked it a little bit, I guess, and I sat him down, and he was bugging me to go back in, and I wasn't going to put him back in for a while,” Brownell said. “I wanted him to calm down and kind of the emotion of it to get past a little bit. And then I don't remember what minute mark it was, 12:00 minute mark, somewhere around that time, the trainer came to me and said, hey, he can go if you want to put him back in.

“So at some point we put him back in, and he tried to tough it out. You could say he wasn't moving quite as well, but his performance down the stretch, the baskets that he made at the end were big time. I mean, we went to him, and he delivered on multiple occasions. Great job by our team of putting him in a good position and then certainly he showed why he's a great player. He was able to make big shots, big scores, under duress at the biggest time in the game. I'm really proud of him, and he's been showing a lot of fight all year, though, so we've seen that and it doesn't surprise me in the least.”

Despite trailing by as many as 14 points early in the second half, the Tigers roared back to force overtime and Brownell said he was proud of his team's fight.

“My guys in all the huddles, we were pretty good. It didn't happen right away, like we kept fighting and the deficit didn't move for a while, and so you can get demoralized,” Brownell said. “We were having trouble getting stops in the game for a long time.

“But we just kept talking to our team, like, let's keep fighting. It's still 11. I think we got it to nine and Al got fouled on a play I remember, and hey, he makes two, it's going to be seven. We've cut it by four, there's plenty of time to go win the game. Just win the next play. Our guys just were very determined to stick it out and just try to go win and put ourselves in a position. We just kept talking about put ourselves in a position with four minutes to go to win, and obviously we did that.”