Clemson has played three conference games this season and won all three by double digits.
The Tigers hope to continue that trend Saturday when they host Atlantic Coast Conference newcomer Cal.
Clemson (11-3, 3-0 ACC) has posted league wins over Miami, Wake Forest and Stanford by an average margin of 11.7 points. Most recently, the Tigers defeated the Cardinal 85-71 on New Year’s Day, thanks in large part to Chase Hunter’s 22 points and a stellar all-around effort by Jaeden Zackery (16 points, six assists, five rebounds and four steals).
The Tigers finished with 16 steals, including six from reserve guard Dillon Hunter (Chase’s younger brother). While Chase is the team’s leading scorer at 17.2 points per game, Dillon is emerging as an important role player for the squad.
“(Dillon) coming in with that defensive intensity off the bench, scoring and creating, is huge for us,” said Zackery, who added that “it just kind of goes through the whole team and everybody feeds off it.”
While the Bears (7-6, 0-2) will certainly take note of the Tigers’ defensive intensity as they prepare for the Saturday contest, they also are hoping to clean up their own work on the defensive end. The Bears are 1-5 in their past six games, allowing an average of 83.0 points over that stretch.
One bright spot for the team in an 86-74 setback at Pitt on Wednesday was the play of freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson, who scored 24 points to raise his season average to 12.7. The 6-foot-1 guard continues to get to the foul line — and shoot efficiently while he’s there. He is 17-for-20 from the stripe over his past two games.
“I thought we battled the whole game,” Cal coach Mark Madsen of his team’s effort against the Panthers. “Jeremiah came off the bench and played really well. He has been someone who has been locked in since he got to campus. He works extremely hard on both ends of the court and it shows.”
This will be the third all-time meeting between the Bears and the Tigers, with the teams splitting the first two. Clemson won 67-59 in the Emerald Coast Classic in November 2022. Cal won the more significant meeting, topping the Tigers 61-60 in the 1999 NIT championship game.
