Clemson vs. Robert Morris postgame quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Opening Statement:

“This was a good defensive performance by our team tonight. I really challenged our guys in the second half to get off to a good start. We needed to send a message that we were going to try to put them away. I thought we were a little slow to some shooters in the first half, but, to their credit, they had some guys make some shots and the five threes were a little problematic. Offensively, we did some good things when we were in our half-court, zone offense and scored well. Jaron (Blossomgame) certainly played well. I was a little disappointed in the 17 turnovers. We give teams opportunities to come back against us because we’re just careless. That’s a problem that we have to get resolved before we get into ACC play.”

On turnovers:

“I think that’s definitely a problem. Guys are just a little careless. They try risky passes when they need to just be more comfortable and confident. Some of the guys that want to be playmakers, don’t need to be making that many plays. We need to get the ball in the offensive flow and let Rod (Hall) make a few more passes. That has to get cleaned up. Our shooting percentages have been OK, but our points per game are never going to be high enough for us to turn the ball over this many times. If we turn it over 10 times and have seven more possessions and score three or four out of those possessions, which was what we were on pace to do, we would score 72 points, which is what we need to be scoring in a game like this. So that needs to be fixed.”

On turnovers against a zone defense:

“It’s always challenging when you play against a zone for 40 minutes. It’s just not something you see as much. Some of (our turnovers against a zone defense) are just carelessness. There are at least five or six that are careless turnovers. We just have to be better.”

On length vs. Robert Morris:

 “Our length helped tonight, but Robert Morris has big guards. Give them a lot of credit. (Rodney) Pryor, Lucky Jones and Marcquise Reed are three pretty good players that can drive and put pressure on you. I thought we did pretty well, but Reed got away from us a little bit. Our big guys bothered them a little around the rim and we hoped to do a little better around our basket on offense.”

On winning four out of five games heading into ACC play:

“We’re an improving team. Over the last month or so, we’ve had one bad half. It was a bad half against a good team on their home court, so it was really bad. But, for the most part, we’ve played reasonably well. We’ve probably played a little better than our record shows in some ways. We’ve had the lead in the second half in almost every game that we’ve lost. We were playing reasonably well in some of those games, then hit our bad spell and couldn’t recover. Some of that is careless turnovers, some of that is the other team making a couple baskets and our defense being a little shaky and not as good as it needs to be, some of it is us still finding our identity offensively. I think we’ve improved over the course of November and December. We’re certainly going to get a big test here in the first five games in the league.”