Men’s Hoops Downs East Tennessee State, 77-47

Nov. 19, 1999

CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) – Will Solomon scored a career high 21 points to lead Clemson to a 77-47 victory over East Tennessee State in a nonconference game Friday night.

Clemson (1-0) extended its home nonconference winning streak to 39 games and the Tigers have won 42 straight in Littlejohn Coliseum against teams from the Southern Conference.

Adam Allenspach had 16 points and 10 rebounds and Andrius Jurkunas scored 13 points for the Tigers, who have won 15 straight season openers.

Solomon was 8-16 from the field and 3-6 from 3-point range. His previous career high was 20 points against Georgia Tech on Jan. 28, 1999.

East Tennessee State (0-1) shot just 34.5 percent (20-58) from the field and did not have a player in double figures. Dimeco Childress led the Buccaneers with 8 points.

For the game, the Tigers shot 57 percent (24-42) from the field.

The Bucs committed 29 personal fouls and the Tigers made them pay. Clemson was 25-38 from the line, while ETSU made just 5 of 16 free throws.

In the final 10 minutes, the Tigers were 13-16 from the line.

The taller Tigers outrebounded the Bucs 42-29 but that height hurt them in ball-handling. They had 16 turnovers.

“My initial reaction is that we defended well for a large part of the game and that we used our size well for a large part of the game,” said Clemson head coach Larry Shyatt. “Our ball handling was a problem and that is going to happen when we have a lot of large people in the lineup.”

Trailing 46-22 at the half, ETSU put together a 14-6 run in the first nine minutes of the second half to cut the Tiger lede to 52-36. The Tigers responded with a 9-0 run to put the game away. Solomon scored five of those points with two layups and a foul shot.

“It’s hard to simulate their size in practice,” Ed DeChellis, ETSU head coach said. “I thought we got out of the gate pretty good and were confident. We played well for a while, but then we made it hard on ourselves, shooting too quick.

“We didn’t put the ball in the basket, we didn’t help ourselves offensively at all and that’s really disappointing.”