Ekene Ibekwe struggled against Clemson, fouling out with six points.

Heads hung low in the locker room Tuesday night after the Terrapin men’s basketball team not only lost — but lost convincingly — at Clemson, 88-73.

Chris McCray said the Terps (13-6, 4-4 ACC) had to figure out what team they wanted to be, acknowledging there have been two distinct sides to the squad over the past month.

There is the Terp team that showed the wherewithal to upstage previously unbeaten Duke on the road and follow it with an impressive encore over Georgia Tech. Then there’s the team that trailed by 26 points at halftime at home to slumping N.C. State 10 days ago, the same team that fell behind 10-0 to Clemson.

As much as coach Gary Williams felt scorned by the scheduling of the road game two days after playing the Yellow Jackets, he admitted it didn’t explain the effort.

“You don’t have the time to practice like you’d like to practice, but that shouldn’t mean anything effort-wise. You might not be perfect in what you do, but you should be able to play harder than that,” he said. “We obviously weren’t in a great frame of mind, it looked like, to start the game.”

The Terps had won the past 13 meetings with Clemson, and the Tigers had lost seven of their past eight games heading into the matchup.

“You might say we didn’t come as mentally ready as we should have, but in my opinion, I didn’t think that we overlooked [them]. I knew we always had challenges playing Clemson,” junior point guard John Gilchrist said.

But the Terps never imagined so many struggles. Clemson center Sharrod Ford proved no match for what had been an improving set of Terp post players. Ekene Ibekwe and Travis Garrison each fouled out, and Will Bowers picked up four fouls in 13 minutes.

After clamping down on hot-shooting guards J.J. Redick and Daniel Ewing of Duke and Jarrett Jack and Will Bynum of Georgia Tech, the Terps were torched by Clemson reserve Shawan Robinson (22 points, five 3-pointers).

After the Terps overcame their early deficit, even taking a brief 23-22 lead, the gap only grew to larger proportions.

“We just played in spurts tonight instead of playing a total 40 minutes,” McCray said.

One positive from the loss was the play of junior point guard Sterling Ledbetter, who had the best shooting night on the team. He connected on 4 of his 6 shots for a career-high 10 points. Since not getting into the game at Duke, Ledbetter has played at least 12 minutes in the past two games, including 26 against Clemson.

Another positive, Williams said, is what remains. The Terps are halfway through their ACC schedule with seemingly the worst behind them after road contests against then-top five teams North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke. The remaining road games are at Miami, N.C. State, Virginia and Virginia Tech.

“We’re 4-4 (in the ACC) and we played 2, 3 and 4 in the country on the road. So the schedule kind of goes our way the second eight games of the swing,” Williams said. “Anything can happen. I hope we learn tonight about getting ready to play.”

TERP NOTES: Nik Caner-Medley was named the national player of the week by ESPN.com’s Andy Katz.