It would have been understandable if the players and coaches on the SMU men’s basketball team started to wonder if Tuesday’s NIT semifinal against Clemson was the end of a remarkable season. The Tigers jumped out to an early 7-0 lead, forcing the Mustangs to turn the ball over on three consecutive possessions at the start of the game. Clemson had more energy on both ends of the floor, made shots and defended harder than the Mustangs, taking a 12-point lead into the locker room at halftime.

Nick Russell said that the way Larry Brown repeatedly has identified flaws in his team and corrected them at halftime has given the Mustangs unending confidence that they can rally from any deficit (photo by SMU athletics).

Maybe this was it, the end of the road. The Mustangs entered Tuesday’s game with a sparkling record of 26-9, but were just a year removed from a losing a record. Maybe the Ponies had grown up as much as they could in a single year.

That attitude, senior guard Nick Russell said, never crept into the Mustangs’ locker room.

“There was never any doubt” that a comeback was possible, Russell said. “We hold ourselves to a high standard. It could have just been 2-0, and somebody’s already going to be saying, ‘let’s pick it up.’”

While the Mustangs rallied around each other to overcome their slow start against the Tigers, Russell said head coach Larry Brown’s trademark halftime speech was instrumental in the turnaround that helped the Mustangs rally to beat Clemson and reach Thursday’s NIT championship game against the University of Minnesota.

“Coach (Larry) Brown gives great halftime speeches — I can’t believe any coach is better at halftime than Coach Brown,” Russell said. “We have played great defense all year, and he told us that if we matched (Clemson’s) energy, our defense would get to the level where it needed to be.

“When Coach Brown talks at halftime, most everything he says comes from the stat sheet. He’ll tell us what we need to improve, and then he gives us the stats that back up what he’s saying. When he talks to us at halftime, there’s a reason behind everything he says. What he says to us is true — it’s always true — so it’s up to us to go out and execute what he’s telling us.”

During the NIT, Brown has had multiple chances to use his halftime speeches to help his team get back on track; the Mustangs have trailed against UC-Irvine, LSU and Clemson, and held just a three-point lead over Cal at the intermission. Against the Tigers Tuesday night, the Ponies stumbled out of the gates, surrendering the game’s first seven points and heading into the locker room staring down the barrel of a 12-point deficit.

“Coach Brown doesn’t yell and scream, but he wasn’t really happy,” Russell said. “We started slow in the first three (NIT) games, so I guess it was only right that we started slow (against Clemson). We know we can’t keep doing that, though. We have to get off to a better start in the championship game.”

Part of the Mustangs’ turnaround against Clemson was nothing more than a matter of patience. The Tigers came out firing — and hitting — from long range, connecting on six of nine shots from long range in the first half.

“I really didn’t think we played terrible defense in the first half,” Russell said. “We wanted to limit their paint touches — we wanted them to shoot threes, but we wanted them to shoot contested threes. Sometimes, a team just makes shots, makes tough shots, and that’s what they did. They weren’t a great three-shooting team coming in (the Tigers finished the season shooting .310 from behind the arc), and it seemed like they couldn’t miss in the first half. Everything they shot went in. We were hoping they wouldn’t do that all night, so we had to buckle down and play the game the way Coach teaches it.”

The plan worked: after hitting 67 percent of their shots in the first half, the Tigers went ice-cold in the second half, hitting just 18.2 percent from long range after the intermission, and the Mustangs stormed back for the win.

Ideally, SMU will lead Thursday from start to finish, but to expect a wire-to-wire lead often is unrealistic in a sport that almost always features teams that alternate going on scoring runs. At the risk of falling back on a cliché, Russell said the Mustangs have to have faith in the system that has guided them to the second-most victories in a season in school history … and if necessary, Brown surely has one more halftime speech in him for his second season on the Hilltop.

“We have to focus on what Coach Brown has taught us and cherish every minute of this,” Russell said. “We know how lucky we are to be playing for him. We have put in the work … we know what to do.

“Coach Brown will have us ready.”