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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 25, 2013Brad BrownellTHE MODERATOR: We have Clemson head basketball coach Brad Brownell. Coach, if you could, a few comments about your team, then we'll open it up for questions. COACH BROWNELL: Coming off a tough loss physically against Maryland. Played very well. Beat us up a little bit on the boards. Certainly have our hands full with a North Carolina team that is playing really well, shoots the ball extremely well from the perimeter. Just seems to be in a very good rhythm right now, playing with a lot of confidence, especially the last couple of weeks. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up for questions. Q. North Carolina three games ago switched to a smaller lineup with four perimeter guys, moved their power forward in at center. What kind of problems does that present? Does it provide any opportunities that a bigger team can exploit? COACH BROWNELL: Well, I think it certainly spaces the floor a little bit better for them and gets an extra shooter on the court, which stretches your defense certainly. It probably helps a little bit of ball handling for them, as well. Maybe it allows them to play a little faster, but I don't know how that's overly possible because they're pretty fast with post players in there, as well. I don't know about taking advantage of things. They maybe don't offensive rebound quite as well without another big guy in the lineup. But to be honest, I think defensively they've been good. They've found ways to scratch down in the post when they've needed the help on a smaller guy or when Harrison is guarding a bigger guy. It doesn't seem to have affected them too much I think just in watching the films. I'm not going to tell you everything we're going to do to play them. Q. It's been a tough month for you guys. I wonder, how is the emotion, morale of this team, at this point? COACH BROWNELL: It's been pretty good, considering what we've been through. We've played well in some games and haven't won, notably Miami and NC State, Florida State on the road. Three games we probably, if you look at the game, controlled the game, controlled the game in a way. We were leading late in the last minute, last two minutes, and weren't able to hold those games off. That's even tougher. I think that's probably the toughest way to lose, is to play well and follow a plan and execute it pretty doggone good, then just down the stretch, miss free throws or the other team makes a great shot, for whatever reason you don't finish out a game. That really takes a lot out of you. Considering our guys have had that happen to them three times here, we're hanging in there pretty good. We were down a little bit against Maryland. Physically, they're big and strong. That size was hard for us to deal with for 40 minutes. But I thought we played some stretches of very good basketball. I think that's kind of been what we've done this year, is I think we've played very good in stretches, then we've had some things happen to us and not respond very well, then play good again a lot of times in spurts in games. We're just not consistently as good as we need to be to finish off some of these games. But we're hanging in there okay. Q. Brad, coaches are talking about four conference games left and finishing strong and heading into the tournament, that sort of thing. What's important for you guys as you look at the last four games as a whole and what you need to do to be playing, leading up to finishing strong? COACH BROWNELL: We need to try to win a couple of these. I know that sounds easy. We need one or two to fall our way here so we can have some positive feedback. You can play well, fight your tail off, lose at the end. When that happens a few times in a row, it becomes a little difficult for you, for your guys to keep their spirits where they need to be, because our margin for error is just not as great as some teams that we're playing. We've got to have everything going in the right direction. I think I'm proud of the way our guys have competed. I think we've competed very well and played a lot of teams very hard. We don't have as much to show for it here in the last month, and that's the frustrating part of it. I'd like to tell you there's one thing, we need to shoot better, score a few more points, make free throws. Certainly that's part of it for our team, but we've also had little things that creep in, whether it's rebound problems in some games, some transition defense in a certain game. It's been one or two things that we take care of, then it tends to rear its ugly head every once in a while. As long as our spirits are good and we're playing the right way, we'll be a very tough team to play against. Q. A couple of coaches have talked about the youth of their teams. Clemson certainly fits into that category. What is the biggest improvement you've seen in your team in terms of how the young players are adapting? COACH BROWNELL: I think by and large, our guys have done a pretty good job of maintaining focus for game plans and we've improved in some of that area, just being disciplined, making a few less errors on some things that we talked about through scouting that earlier in the year we weren't quite as good at. I don't know if we've gotten any more comfortable out there. I think some of our guys have. I think by this time, we've played 26 games, played a bunch of ACC games. Everybody's got young players. But they've been hardened. They're fine. They should be ready to go and make plays, make winning plays. Certainly you saw that with the Wake young players winning a big game against Miami. Guys really are freshmen, but I don't think they're freshmen out there anymore. They're guys that have gotten enough experience that they should be guys that you can count on. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for taking time being with us today. COACH BROWNELL: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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