CLEMSON — The Clemson Tigers are climbing the standings fast.

With their 86-72 victory Wednesday over the Syracuse Orange, the Tigers (16-4, 8-1 ACC) have advanced higher in the ACC conference standings. They currently sit in second place, right behind the 16-2 (8-0 ACC) Duke Blue Devils.

Looking onto the last part of the season, Clemson has a slew of difficult opponents and conference matchups, including Duke, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and more.

Head coach Brad Brownell, when asked about his team’s focus heading into this point of the season, spoke on the importance of reaching an even higher plane.

“We talked about leveling up,” he said. “Improving, not staying stagnant. I think it’s easy to stay stagnant because you don’t have a lot of practice time. You’re doing so much prepping that you don’t feel like you can always improve as much as you’d like on some things that need work.”

The Tigers have won four straight games and seven of their last eight, as they head into back-to-back away games against Virginia Tech and NC State.  While they just earned a critical conference victory against the Orange, there is much to improve, and responsibilities are wide.

“Obviously, your assistant coaches have to do a great job in their personnel meetings with their players and position groups,” Brownell said. “We try to attack certain things for each game to be prepared.”

With 11 games left in the regualr season and many different teams to study, dissect, and perform against, the Tigers have much more work to do. The results of those games, though, won’t allow them to falter.

“We want to continue building our momentum, leveling up, and improving,” Brownell said. “Not just being so result-driven that we’re not trying to continue to improve so we can play our best basketball.”

Clemson heads to Blacksburg, Virginia, to face the Hokies (8-11, 3-5 ACC) this Saturday at 5 pm.