CLEMSON -- At halftime of Friday night's ACC Tournament semifinal against Louisville, radio analyst and stat immortal Tim Bourret revealed a sobering and even shocking trend.
"Clemson has made 17 of its last 77 3-point attempts," Bourret told his listeners.
Whoa.
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The Tigers recovered slightly in the next 20 minutes, going 4-of-10 from long range. And seeing Chase Hunter hit three of those on five attempts was a favorable development.
Yet this team's late-season decline in 3-point shooting is a serious issue that has to get resolved as No. 5 seed Clemson (27-6) sets its sights on Will Wade and 12th seed McNeese (27-6) on Thursday afternoon in Providence, RI.
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Win, and the Tigers get the winner of No. 4 Purdue and No. 13 High Point on Saturday.
Clemson played well enough for long enough this season that fans started to dream of the Tigers cutting down the nets during March Madness.
But here in the moment, that aspiration seems secondary to something much more elemental:
Putting the ball through those nets.
"We haven't shot the ball as well in the last two weeks," Brad Brownell said Sunday. "I don't know that our shot quality is a lot different. We didn't play as well against SMU in terms of shot quality. We had better shots against Louisville by our standards. But we didn't make very many."
As of late February, Clemson had demonstrated that it could light anyone up from long range. The Tigers knocked down 14 on 29 attempts in a huge 79-69 win on SMU's home floor that wasn't that close, and six different players hit 3-pointers that day — including 5-of-8 from Jaeden Zackery and a combined 4-for-7 from Viktor Lakhin and Ian Schieffelin.
Entering a trip to Virginia on the first day of March, the Tigers had hit 38.9 percent of their 3-pointers overall and 39.2 percent of them in conference games.
It was on pace to be Brownell's best season 3-point clip not just at Clemson but over an entire head-coaching career that goes all the way back to 2002.
And what made it more remarkable was that it came after the Tigers lost elite marksman Joe Girard from last year's team.
But then came nine missed 3-pointers on 10 attempts at Virginia. The Tigers recovered by making 8 of 20 against Boston College, but then they missed 17 of 20 from long range in the regular-season finale against Virginia Tech at Littlejohn Coliseum.
A 4-for-21 clip Thursday against SMU in Charlotte wasn't a prominent storyline largely because Clemson gutted out an impressive three-point victory thanks to Hunter's clutch playmaking and overall excellent team defense.
And for so long this season that's been the theme: Clemson can beat you in many different ways, and the Tigers don't necessarily need to be hot on 3-pointers to win games.
Yet everything is magnified when you lose -- and magnified even further when the next loss will bring an end to the season.
Over the last five games, Clemson has made just 21 3-pointers on 87 attempts (24.1 percent). That's probably going to have to change if the Tigers hope to approach last year's spectacular run to the Elite Eight.
The season 3-point percentage is still at 37.2 percent, which ranks ahead of last year's 35.1-percent clip. Hunter has improved his long-range shooting dramatically in his final tour at Clemson -- 41.2 percent compared to 31 percent last season.
On the surface, Dillon Hunter's absence doesn't seem to be a big loss in the 3-point category because he's made just 31.2 percent of his attempts on the season (24 of 77). But he has hit some big ones in clutch moments, including against Duke and N.C. State.
The bigger effect, though, probably comes in the flow that Hunter brought to the offense when he replaced Chauncey Wiggins in the starting lineup: Dillon has 58 assists to just 14 turnovers.
It would also help a great deal if Wiggins, who returned to the starting lineup after Dillon Hunter's injury, is able to emerge from his offensive funk.
Entering February, Wiggins was shooting 40.5 percent from 3 (30 of 74). In a three-game stretch against Virginia Tech, N.C. State and Georgia Tech he was 8-of-16 from 3.
Since then, he's made just six 3-pointers on 24 attempts over the last 10 games.
Also at the start of February, Jake Heidbreder was shooting 46.3 percent from long range (19 of 41) and Del Jones had a 37.5-percent clip (12 of 32).
But after Heidbreder knocked down four 3-pointers on seven attempts against Notre Dame on Feb. 26, he's since missed nine of 10 tries and is 5-of-18 from the field.
Jones has missed 17 of 25 shots from the field over the last five games, and all five of his attempts from long range.
But maybe Chase Hunter finding his groove over the last two games is the catalyst for smoother offensive flow and more success from 3-point land.
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Entering the ACC Tournament he'd averaged just 10.6 points over the previous five games. He produced four points against Virginia Tech, six against Virginia and eight against Notre Dame.
Charlotte was more like it as Hunter met the moments in scoring 15 after halftime against SMU and 19 in the final 20 minutes against Louisville.
Hunter, of course, was the great NCAA Tournament revelation a year ago as he was the clear catalyst in leading the Tigers to the brink of the Final Four.
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Now that Clemson has its trip booked for this year's version of March Madness, no doubt the Tigers have visions of making plenty of shining moments -- visions of cutting down the nets.
But first, the ball needs to start going through those nets at a much higher clip.
"We've got to relax," Brownell said. "We're going to shoot the ball a bunch here in the next three or four days and try to get guys feeling good about themselves. Because at the end of the day, this is about shot-making. You can run good plays. You can get open shots. But if you don't make them, it can be frustrating."
