Clemson Tigers Go Wire-to-Wire in Blowout Win Over Florida State

The Clemson Tigers defeated the home-standing Florida State Seminoles 72-46 on Saturday afternoon at the Donald L. Tucker Center.

The win improves the Tigers to 21-5 on the season.

Clemson has now gone 9-2 over their last 11 games and have won three straight contests. This follows their emphatic 85-65 victory over North Carolina on Feb. 10.

Florida State drops to 15-10 and saw their two-game winning streak snapped.

"The game was great for us, we played very, very well. We played one of our better games of the season," Clemson coach Brad Brownell said after the game. "Florida State can be very dangerous, but they did not shoot the ball awfully well. Hopefully our defense had something to do with it."

Dillon Hunter led the Tigers with 17 points while going 7-of-11 from the field. He also dished out four assists. Ian Schieffelin chimed in with 14 points for Clemson, most of which came when the game was well in hand. He also added 12 rebounds and attacked the defensive glass hard before exiting the game with 3:21 to play. Of his 12 rebounds, 10 came off off the defensive boards.

"Hopefully we are raising the level here. We want ACC Championships, regular season championships, that's very high level stuff," Brownell said. "That's what we are looking to accomplish here. Leonard [Hamilton] has already accomplished that with his team."

Jamir Watkins led the Seminoles. He put together a nice, quiet game with 14 points, adding seven rebounds, two assists and one steal.

Clemson led 53-32 at the 9:30 mark of the second half and then began to slowly pull away. Florida State then went on a stretch for 3:50 without scoring a point and was 1-of-7 from the floor prior to that.

The Tigers went up early in the second half 42-25 as they took advantage of Seminoles misses and hit the defensive boards real well which got their transition game going. The lead would have been greater had Clemson not gone cold for 2:30 in the second half.

Clemson led at the break 36-19. The Tigers shot 50% from the field, while limiting Florida State to a mere 32%. Florida State ended the first half missing 11 of 13 shots and almost got ran out of the building by the Tigers.

The shooting drought carried into the second half for the Seminoles who went 2:26 without scoring a bucket.

Neither team shot particularly well from beyond the arc in the first half as they both shot 33% from deep.

Hunter led Clemson with 12 points in the first half.

Brownell opened his press conference after the game by speaking very highly of outgoing Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton, who is retiring after the season.

"Leonard is the consummate professional and a gentleman," Brownell said. "I've gone up against him twice a year for 25 years and I tell you what, he's a class act."

Clemson will next face SMU in Dallas on Saturday, Feb. 22.

The game is set for a 4 p.m. ET start on ACC Network.

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