CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) \u2014 Jailen Bedford scored 23 points, Ben Hammond had 17 of his 19 points in the second half and Virginia Tech knocked No. 20 Clemson out of a first-place Atlantic Coast Conference tie with No. 4 Duke, beating the Tigers 76-66 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Bedford was the first-half spark with Hammond taking over after halftime as the Hokies (17-8, 6-6) snapped a two-game losing streak with their first win at Clemson since coach Mike Young’s first season in 2019-20.<\/p>\n
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The Tigers (20-5, 10-2) moved into tie for the top after the Blue Devils’ drama-filled loss to rival North Carolina on Saturday night. But Virginia Tech used an 11-5 run, fueled by Bradford’s eight points, to close the first half up 40-33.<\/p>\n
Clemson got to 40-38 early on in the second half, but gradually fell behind by 12 points, 52-40, on Hammond’s second 3-pointer. The Tigers closed to 69-64 on Carter Welling’s three-point play with 2:36 remaining. Bedford followed with his fourth 3-pointer to thwart Clemson’s comeback hopes.<\/p>\n
Bradford got things going for the Hokies with two 3-pointers, then had a three-point play, an inside basket and a 3-pointer as Virginia Tech took control;.<\/p>\n
Clemson, coming off nearly a week on the West Coast with back-to-back wins over Stanford and Cal, had won 27 of its last 30 ACC regular-season games. But the Tigers looked a step slow throughout and allowed the Hokies to shoot 52% for the game, including 11 of 21 from three-point range.<\/p>\n
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Welling had 19 points and six rebounds to lead Clemson. RJ Godfrey, the Tigers leading scorer at 11.9 points coming in, was held to six points.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Virginia Tech: Hosts Florida State on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Clemson: At No. 4 Duke on Saturday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a>. AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) \u2014 Jailen Bedford scored 23 points, Ben Hammond had 17 of his 19 points in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[4473,7,79954,50531,5146,217,19465,79955,231,772,1544,1773,8512,15266,12639],"class_list":{"0":"post-598131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-atlantic-coast-conference","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-bedford","11":"tag-ben-hammond","12":"tag-clemson","13":"tag-college-basketball","14":"tag-hokies","15":"tag-jailen-bedford","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-basketball","18":"tag-ncaab","19":"tag-north-carolina","20":"tag-stanford","21":"tag-the-tigers","22":"tag-virginia-tech"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116055752383530027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}