Brad Brownell: Clemson wasn't 'quite ready' when Arizona 'turned the heat up' in first half of Sweet 16

After the opening tip-off on Thursday night, it was all Clemson against Arizona. The Tigers led by 13 at one point before the Wildcats clawed their way back to make it a 39-31 Clemson lead at halftime.

As for what changed, Brad Brownell said it was simple. Arizona put its foot to the floor, and Clemson had a hard time responding.

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“We did some good things early,” Brownell told CBS’ Allie LaForce at halftime. “Late in the game, we struggled a little bit. They turned the heat up. We probably weren’t quite ready for it. We’ve got to help our guys a little bit more here in the second half.”

Arizona struggled mightily from three-point distance in the first half Thursday, going just 2-for-11 from downtown. The Wildcats found success inside the arc, though, with 22 of their 31 points coming from inside the paint.

That, Brownell said, will be the difference if Clemson wants to maintain its lead.

“I just think they were more aggressive down the stretch off the drive,” Brownell said. “We’ve got to keep the ball out of the paint.”

As a group, Clemson had a strong showing on offense, going 16-for-30 from the field and 5-for-11 from three-point territory. The Tigers also did a good job on defense, holding Arizona to just 13-for-32 shooting and leading scorer Caleb Love to just four points. Love averages 18.1 points per game.

That type of effort means Brownell’s message to the Tigers was getting through after they made Sweet Sixteen as a No. 6 seed.

“Yeah, don’t just be happy to be here. We talked, at one point during the season, I think it was in January, when we were struggling, I had a really hard meeting with our players,” Brownell said. “I told them I was — we were teetering a little bit. We had an unbelievable November and December. We were, I don’t know if it’s just so excited to play, and we played a really hard schedule, and we won a bunch of games. We had, like, no adversity, and we were 10-1 and playing great.

“Then came back from Christmas and got smacked in the mouth by some teams in our league. And had a hard time stringing some games together. We lost a bunch of close games, one-point games.”