TUSCALOOSA – Powered by a second half run where it scored from inside under the basket 10 times in the first nine-and-a-half minutes after taking a 40-35 halftime lead, No. 19 Clemson defeated the University of Alabama basketball team 87-61 Tuesday afternoon in Coleman Coliseum.

The loss drops Alabama to 10-4 overall and improves Clemson, which has now beaten three Southeastern Conference teams this season and lost to one, to 12-1.

“They played terrific, but I think it’s fairly obvious that in the second half we just had a complete collapse of everything,” said Alabama head coach Mark Gottfried who now prepares his team for a Friday night 7 p.m. CT game at home against Chicago State. “You think about this year with our team and how we’ve improved and gotten better and in the second half today, we just came out in the second half and just didn’t do anything very well at all. And then I think it was obvious to everybody that we didn’t compete nearly as hard as we needed to compete. That starts with me. It always does. We’ll get that corrected. It’s an embarrassment to me that our team would compete that bad in the second half. In the first half I thought we competed hard. We had some great looks, made some shots. I think  we could have guarded them a little bit better at times but if you make a couple of open shots, we’ve got a chance to be sitting there winning at halftime. We came out the second half and they made a run, did some things well. They caused us to turn the ball over in the break and they made a nice run and got themselves a 10-12 point lead. And we did not respond well at all.  Period. On either end of the floor. We turned the ball over. We took quick shots and then we gave up easy baskets one after another down there, so that was an embarrassment to us. So our second half was a disaster today. And we’ve obviously got to do a lot better.”

Alabama shot 45.2% in the first half, making 14 of 31 but was 25-63 for 39.7% for the game. Meanwhile Clemson, led by four players who scored in double digits, including starters James Mays and Trevor Booker who both scored 18 points and Terrence Oglesby who came of the bench and made five 3-point shots (of nine) and scored 17 points, shot 53.6% as a team. The Tigers were 37 of 69 from the field and 6 of 16 from 3-point range. Clemson had 21 assists in the game, four of those from Mays.

Alonzo Gee led Alabama with 17 points, making 6 of 9 from the field and all five of his free throws. Richard Hendrix had 14 points and seven rebounds, and Rico Pickett scored 12 points. 

“I thought we played outstanding basketball today,” said Clemson Coach Oliver Purnell. “I thought that we came in the first half and we faced a good ball club that was playing well. They gave us a pretty good couple of blows and I thought our guys showed a lot of mental toughness with staying with our stuff. We gave up some easy baskets in our pressure. They did a good job of keeping the guy home at the basket. We came up and gave up four or five two on ones in the first half that really bothered us and gave them some momentum. Once we solved that we really started to guard them. I thought our bench, our entire roster, in the first half was important in terms of coming in. I thought in the second half, because we were able to use so many guys, we wore them down with our pressure. That was a big part of the reason that we blew the game open."