No. 18 Clemson Tigers are road warriors with 12 straight ACC victories away from home

ATLANTA (AP) — Clemson feels right at home on the road.

The No. 18 Tigers won their 12th straight Atlantic Coast Conference road game on Saturday, pulling away from Georgia Tech in the second half for a 77-63 victory.

They are now tied for the fourth-longest road winning streak in ACC history, equaling Virginia's run from 2017-19.

“It’s hard to do,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “It's the product of having a lot of really good players, and having a staff that’s doing a good job in our prep, and our guys embracing these kinds of games away from home, focusing on our process and what it takes to win.”

Clemson's last road loss in the ACC came more than a year ago, a 74-64 setback at Louisville on Jan. 7, 2025. The Tigers won their final eight conference road games a season ago, then added four more to the streak this season to push their record to 17-4 overall, with a 7-1 mark in the league.

There have been only a few close calls along the way, with Clemson winning those dozes games by an average of nearly 11.2 points. Just four games in the streak have been decided by less than 10 points, most notably a 78-75 overtime victory at Pittsburgh on Jan. 18, 2025.

“Having guys that can make plays at the end of the game, that's a big part of all this too,” Brownell said. “You get on the road and get a game in the last four to six minutes, can your players make enough plays to win the game? That’s usually how it works. We've been fortunate the last few years to have players who can do that.”

The Tigers have lost a pair of conference home games during their streak. They fell to Georgia Tech last season in a thriller that went three overtimes, and then took another OT setback to NC State in their most recent game before traveling to Atlanta on Saturday.

In their latest victory, Clemson led only 35-33 at halftime after Dillon Hunter hit an off-balance, contested 3-pointer just ahead of the buzzer.

But the Tigers pulled away in the second half, stretching the lead as high as 16 points with much better shooting from long range. After hitting 4 of 16 beyond the 3-point stripe in the first half, they knocked down 7 of 12 over the final 20 minutes.

Clemson got contributions all over the court. Jake Wahlin had 13 points and eight rebounds, Hunter chipped in with 12 points, while Nick Davidson (13 points) and Ace Buckner (12 points, four assists) provided a big lift off the bench. Of the nine players in orange who took the court, eight turned up on the scoresheet.

The next target for the Tigers is NC State, which won 13 consecutive ACC road games from 1972-74, and just ahead of that is Duke with 14 in a row from 1962-64.