ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 9, 2022

Brad Brownell

Hunter Tyson

Naz Bohannon

Barclays Center

Clemson Tigers

Postgame Press Conference

Virginia Tech - 76, Clemson - 75

BRAD BROWNELL: Obviously brutal. Brutal ending. Just incredibly proud of the way our guys competed, not just tonight but throughout the season. A lot of adversity, and our guys just kept getting better and being coachable and working through things.

We didn't play as well for a while tonight. I thought Virginia Tech was really good in the first half and controlled the game, but our guys just kept hanging in there and made some really good basketball plays at the end of the game.

I thought Naz and the group that was out there in the middle of the second half really energized us and gave us the chance to have a comeback, and then I thought my team played great. End of the game, overtime, I thought we did most things well.

But give Virginia Tech credit; huge shot by Darius Maddox. They got a couple rebounds in the second half that hurt us that led to points, but certainly this is painful.

I thought my guys played well enough at the end especially to win, and we didn't guard the last play very well, and they made a big shot. Congratulations to them.

Q. Coach, I was just wondering, you mentioned that you didn't like how you guys guarded the last play. What specifically did you not like about how you guys defensively played that last play?

BRAD BROWNELL: Just he didn't pick the ball up early enough. He picked it up early enough, but he didn't stay into the ball. Obviously we talked about no threes. If they go by us and they make a two, that's fine, but we don't want any threes. We sandwiched the point guard to try to take it out of the PG's hand. We kind of did that with Michael DeVoe a couple games ago against Georgia Tech and it worked. Darius is not a guy who's a heavy dribble guy, so they threw it into Darius, and we picked him up, but we just kept backing up.

We obviously talked about, hey, if they screen, we're switching, if they go screen, what we're doing, all these scenarios. At the end of the day, they just threw it to a guy and he dribbled up and shot it over our guy. We needed to be a little tighter, and we shouldn't have kept backing up and kind of let him walk into one, and to his credit, he made it.

Q. Hunter or Naz, I know you guys, it's pretty bitter right now, but looking back on it from a general view, how cool is this experience being able to play in a single elimination tournament in an NBA arena? You guys had the crowd on your side, making a run down the stretch. What's it like playing here with the season on the line?

HUNTER TYSON: Yeah, I mean, it was an amazing experience. We came here, and we had a pretty good plan, and we thought we were going to be able to go out and execute it and hopefully be here for a long week.

Obviously it's heartbreaking seeing that shot go in, especially just because of how our guys fought. Man, I'm so proud of my teammates. We never really stopped believing, and I think that's why we were able to force the game into overtime. Didn't go our way at the end, so that's pretty heartbreaking, but overall the experience of just playing in obviously one of the best arenas in the world, it was a lot of fun.

NAZ BOHANNON: Yeah, like Hunter said, outside of the result, playing here, the experience of playing here in this building in a game like that feels surreal at moments. I came to Clemson for moments like that and moments like these, and to have a chance fighting and to go win a game in March. That's exactly what I had expected, and it lived up to every part of it.

Q. Coach, what can you say about PJ's fight to get back into the game and how well he played when he returned?

BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, tremendous character, toughness. He tweaked it a little bit, I guess, and I sat him down, and he was bugging me to go back in, and I wasn't going to put him back in for a while. I wanted him to calm down and kind of the emotion of it to get past a little bit. And then I don't remember what minute mark it was, 12:00 minute mark, somewhere around that time, the trainer came to me and said, hey, he can go if you want to put him back in.

So at some point we put him back in, and he tried to tough it out. You could say he wasn't moving quite as well, but his performance down the stretch, the baskets that he made at the end were big time. I mean, we went to him, and he delivered on multiple occasions.

Great job by our team of putting him in a good position and then certainly he showed why he's a great player. He was able to make big shots, big scores, under duress at the biggest time in the game. I'm really proud of him, and he's been showing a lot of fight all year, though, so we've seen that and it doesn't surprise me in the least.

Q. Coach, you kind of touched on the way you guys battled back. What did you like most about the way you guys were resilient in that second half?

BRAD BROWNELL: Just that my guys in all the huddles, we were pretty good. It didn't happen right away, like we kept fighting and the deficit didn't move for a while, and so you can get demoralized.

We were having trouble getting stops in the game for a long time.

But we just kept talking to our team, like, let's keep fighting. It's still 11. I think we got it to nine and Al got fouled on a play I remember, and hey, he makes two, it's going to be seven. We've cut it by four, there's plenty of time to go win the game. Just win the next play.

Our guys just were very determined to stick it out and just try to go win and put ourselves in a position. We just kept talking about put ourselves in a position with four minutes to go to win, and obviously we did that.

Resiliency that our team showed all year, but again in this game, really proud of that.

Q. I'm curious, if you guys get an NIT invite, would you accept that and want to play in that?

BRAD BROWNELL: I would think so, yeah. I'd talk to my players, but I would think yes, that would be something that we would want to do.

Q. You were talking about the NIT; what did you see from this season from your squad that might help you in the future to get better down the road?

BRAD BROWNELL: Just a lot. I think our team is just continuing to improve throughout the course of the season. We've developed different guys while PJ and Hunter were out, assimilating guys like Naz and David into our team and putting them in positions, I think, to be successful. The longer they've been with us, the better they've played. It's been a fun group to coach. These guys have worked really hard, and as a coach that's what you want, a group of guys that gives you everything they have, are coachable and improves, and I think our team did that this year.