Clemson’s first real early-season stress test ended the hard way Friday night.
Georgetown walked into Littlejohn Coliseum, handled the opening-half pressure, and left with an 85-78 win that handed the Tigers their first loss of the 2026-2027 season. The Hoyas, who entered at 4-0, built a 19-point first-half lead and then survived Clemson’s pushback when the game tightened late.
The matchup had the feel of a measuring stick from the start. Georgetown came in ranked 87th in the NET and brought the kind of profile that can expose problems: shooting from deep, size inside, and enough balance to make Clemson work on both ends. For a Tigers team that had mostly faced buy-game opponents through three games, this was the first chance to see what held up against a sturdier opponent.
For a while, the answer was not much.
Georgetown buried 6 of 14 from 3-point range before halftime and kept extending possessions with five offensive rebounds and nine second-chance points. Vince Iwuchukwu was especially sharp early, going 7 for 7 from the floor for 16 points and five rebounds in the first half.
Clemson, meanwhile, was efficient enough offensively but got beat on the glass 18-13 and trailed by as many as 19. The Hoyas ripped off 18 straight points at one point, and by halftime they were up 47-32.
“We let big fella get going early, and they were ready to shoot,” Clemson’s Cole Certa said. “We have to come with better energy.”
Brownell pointed to the defensive end as the issue behind Georgetown’s first-half control.
“I've been telling them since the summer, I don't think defensively they're approaching it with the same want to and effort and commitment to being tough and doing hard things that they need to,” he said.
Clemson’s response came after the break, and for a stretch it looked like the Tigers might turn the night completely around. They opened the second half with back-to-back 3s, started getting stops, and helped wake up the crowd. Dylan Faulkner’s dunk cut the deficit to 54-50 and brought the building fully into the game.
Then Certa drilled a 3-pointer with eight minutes left to put Clemson ahead 62-61, its first lead since the 14:20 mark of the first half. From there, the game turned into a back-and-forth fight, with both teams trading baskets and the lead.
Ace Buckner led Clemson with 20 points and five assists, while Certa finished with 14 points and Liutauras Lelevicius added 10. Georgetown got 21 points and six assists from Jaland Lowe, who scored 16 of those points after halftime. Iwuchukwu finished with 10 rebounds to lead the Hoyas on the glass, and Georgetown outboarded Clemson 33-27.
The Tigers also finished with five turnovers, shot 47.5 percent from the field and 40.7 percent from 3.
Still, Clemson could never quite finish the climb. Georgetown answered Clemson’s surge with another run, then held a five-point lead with just over a minute left. From there, the final sequence went Georgetown’s way: Clemson miss, Georgetown 3-pointer, Clemson miss.
There was some late noise over an uncalled travel with 21 seconds remaining, but Clemson was already down five by then.
Afterward, Buckner said the loss left him feeling “punched in the mouth” and said he would leave with a bad taste in his mouth. Brownell said the next step, with one game left before the Maui Invitational, is about more than talking through it.
“Those are all easy things to talk about,” Brownell said. “That takes a maturity sometimes, and I think Ace will certainly do that. But it's not as easy to do all the things we're talking about, especially when you're newer and young.
“We're trying to kind of understand what it is that really good winning basketball looks like.”
Clemson stays home for its next game against The Citadel on 7 p.m. on ACC Network. The Bulldogs are 2-1 and play at North Florida on Nov. 14 at 2 p.m.
Tyler Mrus leads The Citadel with 17.7 points per game. Clemson last played The Citadel in an 80-69 home win in 2022.
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