Clemson vs. Miami postgame quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Opening statement:

“I thought our guys showed a lot of resiliency tonight; it didn’t come easy. Certainly there were some things in the game that could have caused us to lose confidence and think that this just might not be our night. We had a few calls go against us, they banked in a three and we didn’t play great defensively. We won this game because we executed offensively and Jordan (Roper) and Jaron (Blossomgame) were playing at a very high level. That is as a high a level as we have seen out of guys in the last couple of years, for us to have guys make those types of reads and decisions and play with that kind of confidence. Certainly, I felt like they were the difference in the game.”

On if the technical foul he received in the second half helped with momentum:

“I think everybody makes too much out of that, I thought that our guy got fouled and the play before that, I don’t know if it was the right call either. So I was disappointed because they were crucial plays in the game. If they helped, great, but I have gotten them before and they didn’t help, so believe me, it isn’t the reason we won, the reason we won is because of Jordan Roper and Jaron Blossomgame.”

On what the Tigers did to contain Sheldon McClellan:

“I don’t know that we did anything special, I think we certainly guarded him and paid attention to him. He is an outstanding player and a guy that when he gets rolling he is hard to guard, he can score on the zone and he makes deep threes. There wasn’t anything special, it was just making sure that guys knew who he was, and where he was and trying to do the best job you could on him. Different guys guarded him, Donte (Grantham) guarded him a lot, but it wasn’t anything special that we did in all honesty.”

Miami Head Coach Jim Larranaga

“Well, I thought it was a terrific college basketball game for about 35 minutes and then we collapsed in the last five. We’re going to need to do a heck of a lot better job. I thought Clemson was terrific down the stretch, they made all their free throws, they were 15-15 from the foul line. They made their threes. We’re a very good three-point shooting team and we went 7-14 from three, but they out-executed us in the last five minutes and that was the difference in the ball game.”