No. 22 Clemson hosts NC State, seeks to match best ACC start

No. 22 Clemson holds a share of first place in the Atlantic Coast Conference and owns a nine-game winning streak.

That makes it even a more formidable task for North Carolina State when the teams meet Tuesday night at Clemson, S.C.

Clemson (16-3, 6-0 ACC) has gone more than a month without a loss, posting an impressive 69-59 home victory against Miami on Saturday.

There have been positive trends.

"Just coming out ready to go and sort of making a statement that we're here ready to play and play well and compete," Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. "I think our guys do deserve some credit for the maturity they show by sustaining it."

NC State (12-6, 3-2) lost a puzzling 78-74 game to visiting Georgia Tech on Saturday. This came after winning back-to-back road games, so perhaps leaving home won't be such a bad thing for the Wolfpack.

Except that Clemson will be the host.

"We haven't been very consistent," NC State coach Will Wade said. "It's kind of been the story of our team as two steps forward, one step back."

Clemson is aiming to match its best start in ACC play, a mark that it achieved in 2022-23 by winning its first seven league games.

Carter Welling had a season-high 18 points in the Miami game. The key contributors for the Tigers have been numerous.

Dillon Hunter matched a career high with seven assists and also raked in a season-high four steals Saturday.

"That's who Dillon Hunter is as a player," Brownell said. "We want him to do what he does and that's to run a team."

NC State's 37.1% shooting from the field Saturday marked its second-worst rate of the season. The Wolfpack made five field goals in the final 10 minutes of the game.

"We couldn't match their energy at the beginning of the game, so we tried to come out with the fake energy and they overpowered us, simple as that," NC State guard Quadir Copeland said.

NC State has a 0-3 record against ranked opponents this season. Now the Wolfpack are coming off a loss that looks harmful to their credentials.

"It's hard to recover from," Wade said. "You lose a home game like this, it's hard. Our resume wasn't great, but it was clean. No bad losses. Now it's blemished. We're going to have to punch above our weight class a couple of times to get back where we need to be."

So that makes the visit to Clemson a huge opportunity for the Wolfpack. Yet Clemson tends to play a physical style, so that might require NC State to upgrade in that area.

That's where the Wolfpack had shortcomings against Georgia Tech.

"They made it difficult and were very physical with us, so we had to exert a lot of energy to get the ball into the paint," Wade said. "Once we got there, we didn't finish possessions."

Clemson scored nearly half of its points - 34 - in the lane against Miami.

While there was a lot of buzz around NC State at the beginning of the season, that type of interest has spread to Clemson for recent home games.

"Very meaningful for our players to be playing well and come out and see that support," Brownell said.