Clemson vs. Pittsburgh Postgame Quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Overall thoughts:“This was certainly a painful loss. I guess you do this long enough and you see a little bit of everything. I have experienced a lot of things in games, and that is one I haven’t experienced before. Obviously it will be with me for a while. It’s disappointing because we played well enough to win. Guys made good plays. We had a lot of guys play well today, but that is going to be overshadowed because of the way we played the last 15 seconds. That is hard to get over, but we’ve got tonight to feel sorry for ourselves and then we need to wake up tomorrow and try to get ready for the ACC Tournament.”

On strategy on the game’s final play in regulation:“It’s the next thought. We talked about if you throw it deep, there is still enough time in my mind with two seconds left, if the ball is intercepted that the other team has a chance to dribble it down and take a three to beat you.  If it was under two seconds, we were probably going to look to throw it long at some point. I just thought we could get the ball in bounds, but I guess we couldn’t. I haven’t seen the play. I guess the ball hit off K.J.’s shin and had a lucky bounce, went right to their guy and he made it. My thinking was that if you throw it somewhere in the frontcourt, they can steal the ball, get two or three dribbles and get a shot up. I wasn’t going to lose the game like that, because I thought we could get the ball in bounds.”

On the referee’s explanation to Coach Brownell:“They did not (explain anything). They said it was unbelievably close and that he was going to count the basket. It was really close. He did not get involved with details.”

On Pitt’s momentum in overtime:“I didn’t like the look in our eyes. Our eyes in the huddle weren’t good. I actually hit my hand into the dry erase board to try and wake our guys up. I could tell we were not in a good place. It was different than Maryland. I couldn’t get them back.”