Clemson basketball sneaks past Georgia Tech on senior day. ACC Tournament looms
There wasn’t a ton of celebrating on Clemson men’s basketball senior day.
The Tigers ultimately got the result they wanted, but they’ll head to next week’s ACC Tournament in Charlotte with some lingering questions after having to sweat out Saturday’s game with last-place Georgia Tech at Littlejohn Coliseum.
Clemson won 79-76 to finish the regular season at 22-9 and 12-6 in the ACC.
But Georgia Tech (11-20, 2-16 ACC) nearly played spoiler, leading for the majority of the first half and taking Clemson down to the wire in the second half.
The Tigers went up 72-69 with 2:22 left on guard Efrem “Butta” Johnson’s floater, and Johnson’s corner 3-pointer on their next possession (after a 1-of-2 Georgia Tech free throw trip) gave Clemson a 75-70 lead with 1:38 remaining in the game.
GT responded with a layup, then Clemson guard Ace Buckner hit one of two free throws for a 76-72 lead. Down four points, Georgia Tech drew a foul on a 3-point attempt and guard Jaeden Mustaf made two of three to cut the lead to two.
Up 76-74 with 16.1 seconds left, Clemson guard Dillon Hunter made his first free throw and missed his second. Teammate Carter Welling grabbed the offensive rebound but shot the ball instead of bringing it back out ... and missed.
Georgia Tech scored quickly on its next possession (77-76), but Buckner redeemed himself by making both free throws to give Clemson a 79-76 lead with 3.2 seconds left. GT, without any timeouts, missed a half-court attempt at the buzzer to tie.
The top four seeds in next week’s ACC Tournament are set, but Clemson’s win Saturday locked the Tigers in for the No. 5 seed since they entered Saturday in standalone fifth place in the conference, a game ahead of Louisville and N.C. State.
That placement puts Clemson in a Wednesday 9:30 p.m. game against the winner of the Tuesday No. 12/No. 13 seed game at Spectrum Center. With a win, Clemson would advance to play No. 4 UNC on the Thursday quarterfinals.
“Just one of those games where it felt like, ‘Man, this is going to be a hard one to pull out,’” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said postgame. “Obviously, we got down 10 in the second half, but we found a way.”
Game recap
Georgia Tech entered Saturday having lost 11 straight ACC games and 14 of its last 15 conference games. The Yellow Jackets have been so bad under coach Damon Stoudamire this season they’ve already been eliminated from next week’s ACC Tournament in Charlotte (reserved for the top 15 teams in the 18-team league).
But GT has a knack for playing well at Littlejohn Coliseum, beating the Tigers on their home court in double overtime in 2024 and triple overtime in 2025.
That didn’t change during this year’s trip up Interstate 85. The Yellow Jackets made 11 of their first 17 shots, stunning a sleepy crowd — and a pretty sleepy Clemson team, whose first-half defensive effort was lackluster, especially for a Brownell-coached team.
Georgia Tech led by as many as nine points in the first half and led 39-33 at halftime. GT shot 50% from the field and 50% on 3-pointers in the opening frame. Clemson’s only bright spot was senior forward Nick Davidson, who scored 12 points.
Hunter said the emotions of senior day impacted Clemson early on.
“You want to win so much and play so hard, you can kinda get out of your groove,” he said. “But we settled in as a team. ... After the first half, we came back to locker room, got together and said knew we were going to win this game.”
The Tigers trailed by as many as 10 points early in the second half before going on a 16-2 run to fire up the crowd and take a 53-49 lead with 11 minutes remaining.
From there, Clemson (a pregame betting favorite of 17.5 points) maintained a lead of one or two possessions and ultimately pulled out a win against a scrappy GT squad.
The Yellow Jackets shot 50% from the field overall and led for 23:06 of a possible 40 minutes. The game featured five ties and 13 lead changes.
Johnson and Davidson tied for the team lead with 15 points, and Welling (13 points) and Buckner (10 points) also scored in double figures for Clemson.
The Tigers finished the season losing five of their last ACC games after a 10-1 start to league play but avoided what would’ve been a damaging Quad 4 home loss.
Clemson will head to Charlotte as a safe bet to make the field. It’ll be the first time in Brownell’s tenure the Tigers have made three straight NCAA Tournaments, which isn’t bad considering Clemson returned just one scorer from last year’s record-setting, 27-win team (Hunter).
“That’s what I’ve been proud of this group for all year,” Brownell said. “I don’t think a lot of people believed in us, and these guys have just kind of kept fighting and figuring things out.”
This story was originally published March 7, 2026 at 2:24 PM.
