Brad Brownell shares how Clemson beat Syracuse's zone defense

Clemson was firmly in the ACC title race a month ago at 10-1 in the conference while looking fairly certain to make the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in head coach Brad Brownell’s tenure. Then the Tigers lost three in a row and dropped another game at Louisville, which went down as a Quad 4 defeat. Suffice to say: Clemson shot itself and its tournament hopes in the foot in the month of February.

However, since the Tigers did play so well to start the ACC season, they’re still in the thick of the bubble race, but needed to stack wins to end the regular season to salvage their postseason hopes. They started the rebound with a necessary home victory over Syracuse, blowing the Orange out 91-73 on Wednesday night, thanks to one of their best offensive performances of the season.

Clemson recorded their highest efficiency rating of the year vs. ‘Cuse and were ridiculously good inside the arc, shooting 20-29 on twos. They also knocked in 14 threes on 36 tries — not a blistering rate but 14 made threes is a terrific night from deep for this club and especially against that Syracuse zone. After the game, Coach Brownell spoke on the key to defeating the patented Boeheim defense:

“Making shots, you know. When you make shots then it spreads out a little bit. When you have a lead, it spreads out. Like in the second half, obviously, they’re pressing and everything’s different than — you know, there’s some open court stuff. They’re just wider because they’re trying to get a steal or two. And now you can get the ball inside a little bit easier. So it’s really different when it’s that way versus maybe the way it was in the first half, even though we executed, I thought, very well.”

Zone defenses tend to leave shooters open from deep, so teams facing Syracuse, above all else, have to knock down some good looks from three, which Clemson did,.

“But, you know, you got to make shots. If you don’t make shots, it’s challenging, because it’s not easy to get it to the places you want to get it to. But, you know, we had a nice mix to our game today. Our guys did some good things.”

Syracuse isn’t the defensive juggernaut of Boeheim’s earlier days, but as we’ve seen in NCAA Tournaments over the last decade, zones can still give any team fits. Good on Brad Brownell’s group for handling it expertly to secure a season-saving win.