What Clemson women's basketball coach Shawn Poppie said after losing to South Carolina

Clemson women’s basketball coach Shawn Poppie addressed the media on Wednesday night after the Tigers fell to South Carolina, 77-45.

Below is an edited transcript of his comments.

OPENING STATEMENT: “Hats off to South Carolina. They’re the number one team in the country for a reason—40-something wins in a row for a reason.

We knew we had our hands full, but it was an awesome environment, so thanks to those who showed up and created an amazing atmosphere. It was a great opportunity for our kids to compete in that setting.

I’m proud of our girls. I think our group competed. We didn’t have enough, but we competed. It’s really hard to keep competing when the ball isn’t going in the basket. We hit a rough stretch in the first half, and who knows what could’ve happened if we’d finished out those last four minutes stronger. It would’ve been interesting to see how the game looked.

Overall, it was a wonderful learning opportunity, and I’m proud of our locker room. I think we have a bright future here at Clemson.

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On the team’s buy-in and effort…

“Credit goes to the group we’ve got in there. They’re bought in to what we’re trying to do. We’re in a learning curve with a bunch of new faces in there, but there’s a trust level, and we’re working to learn each other—especially in environments like that. For us, we hang our hat on the defensive side of the ball, that’s kind of why we were in the game early on. 23 percent for them, 27 for us, 13 in the second (half), we weren’t scoring. We’ll get better at that.

And we will get better at that, but I felt like we’ve kind of understood our identity and we’re leaning on that. But we also, again, we went on a game plan. I thought for the most part we took care of the basketball, we kept them out of transition, and in a halfcourt setting. We were not able to keep them off the glass—that was one of our big keys. But early on we did, and it allowed us to have a lead. Like we again showed, we went through a stretch of turning it over there, I think, at the end of the first half. We’ve got to take care of the basketball but also understand that we got to keep playing when we’re in an offensive rut.”

On the most important takeaway for his team…

“My hopes are that they can take that we have an opportunity to be really darn good at competing at the highest level. I mean, we showed spurts in that game where we were going neck and neck with the number one team in the country. We’re just not able to do it for 40 minutes yet, right? We’re game four, right?

So, with this group, if we can take this and push us forward because we did a lot of good things out there. For us, we get an opportunity next week, if we handle business, to have another top 25 opponent in Alabama, right? So you’re going to get another opportunity in less than a week, right

And I think that we have a group in there that’s willing to look in the mirror and get better because there should be a lot of good things if we take it the right way, right? It does one of two things when you lose like this, right? And I love the group we have, and I do believe that they’ll take us and run in the positive direction.”

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On defensive improvement and holding South Carolina to a low first-half point total…

“Well, it’s a buy-in for the group, right? Like, you’re going to have to not just roll the ball out and expect you can stop people, right? It’s going to take a scheme, a discipline level, and then a trust level that they can go implement it, right?

Like, how we defend is try to take their weaknesses and make them do it as many times as they can and beat you that way. And we know we’re undersized—that’s not something that, like, is a secret, you know? So because of that, you can look at it one of two ways: either you can do it or you can’t do it. And I believe that. I love my staff, and they work so darn hard to figure out what other teams’ weaknesses are and how can we put a scout together that they can buy into to give us an opportunity to compete and potentially win.

And I thought we had a game plan that was good enough. We probably got to do a better job making some adjustments along the way. But all in all, it’s a trust level from them to us that we’ll put them in a good position, and then they go handle business. But we also got some competitors, right? And so if you’re going to be small, you better be able to compete.

On rebounding margin…

“Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we knew we probably weren’t going to win the overall rebounding battle. It was really the second-chance points. It wasn’t necessarily total rebounds, right? Because, again, philosophically, we were sending all five people back, right?

So for us to get seven offensive boards and sending all five back’s pretty good. And it was really more so playing numbers, right? Like, they are so good in transition. We didn’t think by us crashing we would get very many anyway, and so why not just get back and keep this in a halfcourt game as much as we could? It was the second-chance points that were a big, big difference for us.

To think that fast-break points—we actually outscored them 8 to 6—is kind of, it’s exactly what we talked about. Fourteen points off turnovers, both of us, right? But 27 second-chance points from how we were planning on guarding couldn’t happen, right? And so, like I talked to the team, that’s not just on our bigs. I thought that at times our guards didn’t get through some of the ball screens, and so all of a sudden a big has to help over, and you look at the weak side and Ashlyn Watkins is going against one of those little guards you’re just talking about trying to rebound. Well, that’s impossible, right? We had to stay body-to-body as much as we could, and it didn’t happen enough.

On how useful this game is…

“Yeah, as long as we can pull off the good, right? And build off that and understand that, like, some of the things we didn’t do well is controllable, right? Again, South Carolina is really good, and so they made some of those things happen. But you’re going to see a lot, I believe, on film where we allowed one bad play to fog our brains and not be able to execute on the other end, right?

We’re not good enough for that to happen. But you’re going to see that when we went through spurts of having a focus and a togetherness that we can compete with anybody. And so you got to take that, and I love that feeling, right? We just got to do it much, much longer. But it’s something we’re going to lean back on. My hopes are that the fan base and whoever watched on TV can see we’re building something special here at Clemson. It’s not a scoreboard; it’s a feeling of “they are going to compete, they love one another,” and it’s just a matter of time.”

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