Reed catches fire late to continue Clemson’s best start under Brownell

CLEMSON – No. 25 Clemson basketball continued its best start under Brad Brownell with an overtime 74-69 win over Louisville Saturday afternoon. 

Marcquise Reed led the way for the Tigers with a game-high 24 points and three assists.

This is the first time Clemson has started 3-0 in ACC play since 2006-07 and is the first 10-game winning streak under Brad Brownell.

"Super proud of the way our team competed," Brownell said after the win. "Both teams really struggled to score. I thought both defenses were a big part of it. I thought they really bothered us with some things and I thought we bothered them.

"We showed in overtime that we can score and play better offense, but I am really pleased that we could win a game where we had to defend."

With the game tied at 55, Clemson secured a rebound with 33 seconds remaining, but Elijah Thomas threw the ball away to give Louisville the last shot. Clemson fans had seen this movie before with the many close losses suffered last season.

Instead, the Tigers forced a stop, got the break they needed and headed to overtime.

Clemson took over from there, scoring 19 points in overtime, finishing the game making its last three field goals. Two Gabe DeVoe three-pointers and a Reed steal and layup secured the victory for the Tigers.

"It felt good to see the ball go through the hoop in a big moment like that," DeVoe said. "I rushed a couple early, but just stayed confident throughout the game and just kept shooting the ball."

Most of the shooting Saturday afternoon in Littlejohn Coliseum matched the temperatures outside: ice cold. Reed failed to get the memo.

The Tigers made 25 out of 68 field goals, only shooting 37-percent, but Reed’s 8-of-17 shooting gave Clemson the spark it needed.

The junior guard caught fire. 18 of his 24 points came in the second half and overtime. He didn’t touch the ball in the final two minutes of regulation, so he took it upon himself to take over with his defense.

"It was just one of those nights where I was just feeling it," Reed.

Reed’s five steals, three in the final two minutes and overtime, gave Clemson the energy it needed to finish the game on both ends. 

Even though Clemson shot poorly most of the afternoon, they picked things up on the defensive end. The Tigers forced 21 turnovers and blocked seven shots.

"We had to strap up defensively down the stretch," Reed said. "Coach got on to us during the media (timeout) and said we were going to have to tighten up our defense to win the game."

The Tigers, playing in their first home game as a ranked team under Brad Brownell, struggled to get things going through the first twenty minutes of action going 1-11 from behind the arc. Clemson started the contest 0-8 from three until Shelton Mitchell finally knocked one down with 3:55 left in the first half.

After falling behind 30-25 at the 15:49 mark in the second half, Clemson used a 17-4 run over the next six minutes to take a 42-34 lead with 9:31 on the clock.

The biggest spark may have come on the court, but not from a Clemson player. In the second half, a Clemson student hit a 90-foot putt to win 10,000 dollars. That putt gave the Littlejohn crowd energy and the Tigers came alive on the offensive end.

Clemson used 12-2 run gave the Tigers a 42-34 lead with under nine minutes to go, but Louisville used a run of their own to tie the game with two minutes left in regulation.

The narrative of Clemson losing close games last season has stuck with Brownell. After another close victory Saturday afternoon for his 10th straight win, Brownell was asked what's changed.

He was annoyed.

"Again, we are going to talk about this a lot this year every time we win a close game. This is where we are going to go and that's fine," Brownell said. "But players make plays. Guys made free throws, I didn't have anything to do with that. They made shots, Gabe made threes, we had two great stops in the last minute... we had to stop them twice to send the game into overtime.

"There is a little bit of momentum that comes from winning close games, that guys get more comfortable and confident. You hope that's the case. Last year's team, we won early in the season. Everybody forgets like, 'oh, we lost every close game.' We did win some early, that's why we were 10-2. We didn't get the wins late in the year and that's why we finished poorly."

Brownell said this team is mostly the same, continues to compete, and is finally catching a couple of breaks that they didn't get last season. 

The narrative may be changing.

"We're certainly trying to build on that," Brownell said.

The Tigers are now 14-1 and look to continue its 10-game winning streak on Thursday against N.C. State at 9:00 P.M.