Three Takeaways from Clemson Basketball's Win Over Miami

On Saturday afternoon, No. 22 Clemson basketball was victorious for the ninth-straight game, defeating the Miami Hurricanes 69-59 to move to 16-3 on the season. Clemson picked up its sixth straight win to open conference play.

Below are three takeaways that bring even more excitement to the program as ACC play rolls on.

Saturday Was Carter Welling’s Day

Constantly, Clemson has seen a different scorer make waves for the team, with different opponents come different advantages. On Saturday, the advantage went to big man Carter Welling.

Welling finished with a season-high 18 points and nine rebounds, arguably one of his best performances in a Clemson uniform so far this season. He also hit two three-pointers, showing his ability to stretch the floor. The 6-foot-11 forward is shooting the ball about 32% from deep, which is around how he performed at Utah Valley for the past two seasons.

The transfer said that it’s the system that works out for Clemson each game, with the Tigers using advantages based on opposing personnel to decide who gets each look.

“I think it makes it hard to scout against,” Welling said after the game. “I think, if you got a lot of dudes, I mean, you can’t take everything away. And so, I think, you know, whatever the team’s game plan is, and they’re trying to take away, we’ll just go to the dudes that got it going and find weaknesses in the defense that way.”

If head coach Brad Brownell needs to load points onto the frontcourt, Welling was able to prove it this weekend, if it needs to happen again.

Against Offensive Teams, Clemson Still Plays Its Defensive Game

The Hurricanes came into Littlejohn Coliseum as the No. 23 scoring offense in the country. Miami averaged 87.8 points per contest coming into the game and scored the lowest it has had all season.

That’s happened before for the Tigers. The team has actually played five of the current top 30 scoring teams in the country, including the No. 1 team, Georgia, and the No. 4 team, Alabama. Still, in those games, Clemson’s defense forced both of the SEC teams into droughts to slowly play its game.

While Clemson is 3-2 against those top 30 teams, which include BYU and SMU as well, its ability to lock down on defense, as well as force turnovers, has allowed the Tigers to play to their tempo, something that has seemed to work out thus far.

Dillon Hunter calls the defense active in the ability it’s able to find advantages. Miami had two players who averaged 16 points or more coming into the game, Malik Reneau and Tre Donaldson.

The two combined for a total of 16 points, a credit to Brownell’s system.

“We’re always an active defense,” Hunter said. “Coach prides himself on really the defensive end, so we wanted to make it hard for them. They got two good players in Donaldson and Reneau. So, just trying to make it hard for them, stay inside, get deflections and stuff like that.”

Have We Found Clemson’s Ceiling Yet?

The Tigers are 16-3 now, winning their last nine straight games and starting 6-0 in ACC play. They’re only tied with Duke at the top of the ACC standings.

It begs the question, just how good could this team be?

Clemson is 13th in the country in scoring defense, only allowing 64.5 a contest while playing high-scoring teams. The team doesn’t shoot the ball often, but shot 47.1% from deep in Saturday’s win. That’s fourth in the conference.

Brownell credits the defense, most importantly. He called the performance against Miami “high-level” defensively, looking to continue to see more out of his unit as the Tigers go into conference play.

“There’s always things you can get better at, but today was a high-level defensive performance,” he said. “No doubt about it. I mean, we did a lot of things that we needed to do in the game to make it difficult on them, and we have to kind of continue to do that.”

Since the beginning of ACC play, Clemson hasn’t scored a lot of points; it has just limited its opponents to doing so. The team hasn’t scored more than 80 points in a game since Alabama in early December. Now, Brownell’s team is letting his defense tell the story, and it has worked out.

The Tigers’ head coach will look to continue to see more out of his team beginning on Tuesday, when NC State comes into town to play. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. from Littlejohn Coliseum.