Clemson found itself in a very familiar spot Wednesday night at Notre Dame.

Needing a win to keep its slim NCAA Tournament hopes alive, the Tigers found themselves defending their basket with 16 seconds to play as Notre Dame walked the ball up the court with a chance to tie or win the game.

Four times prior to this moment, Clemson had been in nearly this exact situation and all four times it lost the game. Were the Irish about to do it to the Tigers again?

Not this time.

T.J. Gibbs badly missed a potential game-winning three-pointer with three seconds to play, but Nate Laszewski grabbed the rebound and was fouled by Clemson’s Shelton Mitchell as he tried to make a play under the basket.

Laszewski made the first foul shot and a chance to tie the game and force overtime, but he was off the mark with his second shot as the Tigers hung on for a 64-62 victory at the Joyce Center in South Bend, Ind.

“We have played pretty well, most of the year. We have lost four one-possession games in the league, in heartbreaking fashion. In almost any way that you can think about it,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said after the win. “So, we have shown tremendous resilience to just kind of keep fighting. Those losses are tremendous gut-punches, especially when you are battling to make the tournament.

“Every time you begin to feel like you are on solid ground, you get knocked back down. It is hard to keep going into those locker rooms when our guys have done most things right. We have not had any breaks or any good breaks it feels like.”

That is until Wednesday night.

The Tigers (18-12, 8-9 ACC) finally caught a break and it could not have come at a better time. Clemson is hanging on to the NCAA Tournament bubble by the smallest of threads and desperately needed a win against the Irish.

A loss could have been catastrophic to its postseason dreams.

“This is the first break we have had in a close game in which somebody else missed a shot,” Brownell said. “We have had them banked in, hit a 23-footer at the buzzer that we guarded. We had one blocked at the rim at Louisville and then we had a tough no-call against North Carolina.

“So, we have been in four situations that have been gut-wrenching.”

Wednesday night looked like it was going to be another gut-wrenching loss too. Despite controlling the game for much of the night, the Tigers suddenly found themselves trailing by four points, 58-54, after Gibbs drained a three-pointer with 3:58 to play in the game.

With everything they had been through this season, it would have been easy for the Tigers to give up. But that did happen. Instead senior guard Shelton Mitchell pulled up and knocked down a transition jumper to pull them back within two points. Then fellow senior guard Marcquise Reed found himself open under the basket for a layup to tie the game with 2:29 to play.

Reed, who scored a game-high 22 points, then pulled up from the left elbow and knocked down a jump shot with 55 seconds to play to give Clemson a 60-59 lead. On Notre Dame’s ensuing possession, he stole a pass with 28 seconds left and then subsequently went down and made two pressure free throws to give his team a three-point lead.

“I am proud of our guys for continuing to pick themselves up off the mat and still fight because it is not easy, especially when the kids are being criticized and all of those kinds of things,” Brownell said.

Thanks to Wednesday night’s win, the Tigers now have a shot to make the NCAA Tournament when they host Syracuse in their regular-season finale on Saturday at Littlejohn Coliseum.

–Matt Freeman of Irish Sports Daily contributed to this story