This team preview is part of the RTC ACC microsite’s preseason coverage.

Burning Question: Is this the year that Clemson returns to the NCAA Tournament?

Clemson head coach Brad Brownell has a swanky remodeled home arena, a returning All-America candidate and three talented transfers ready to join a group that finished last season at 10-8 in ACC play. After five consecutive seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance, the Tigers may finally be poised to crash the Big Dance once again. Brownell’s job security may or may not depend on an invitation to the NCAA Tournament this year, but history shows that it is an extremely rare situation for an ACC coach to remain in his post after six straight years of missing the games premier event.

Brad Brownell hopes that Clemson makes it back to the NCAA Tournament after a five-year hiatus. (sportstalksc.com)

In his six seasons at the helm, Brownell has developed a deserving reputation as a coach who maximizes his available talent. With a six-year 50-54 conference record, the Tigers have become a consistent middle-of-the-pack ACC program. Early in Brownell’s tenure, road wins were scarce — he logged only five such victories during his first three years at the school. But lately, the Tigers have improved in that regard by claiming 10 road wins over the past three seasons. Last year Clemson was very competitive in most of its away losses, dropping three games by three points or fewer and winning three others. Speaking of playing on the road, the Tigers also return to a remodeled Littlejohn Coliseum this season after spending 2015-16 at Greenville’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena — a 45-minute trip from campus. Capacity at the new Littlejohn is slightly lower now, but 9,000 wild fans should be plenty to recreate the electric home court atmosphere that students at Clemson have historically provided. Read the rest of this entry »

This team preview is part of the RTC ACC microsite’s preseason coverage.

Will Clemson’s offense improve enough to make the Tigers an ACC winner?

Near the end of the 2014-15 season, we reviewed the pros and cons of Brad Brownell’s six-season tenure at Clemson. We concluded then that his positives and negatives have pretty much been a wash. The Tigers are usually competitive on the floor – especially on the defensive end — and well-behaved off the court. But a lack of elite-level talent has kept Clemson from being able to join the ACC’s upper tier, and the Tigers’ slow, offensively-challenged style of play has not exactly ignited the fan base. Can the Clemson faithful expect any improvement from a team that only loses a couple of key performers from last year? And if so, will it be enough improvement to keep Brownell off of the coaching hot seat? To search for those answers, let’s begin by looking at Brownell’s coaching profile over 13 years at three different schools.

The above table reveals that Brownell has some consistent historical head coaching traits. First of all, he has been a winner everywhere he’s been, sporting only one overall losing record (13-18 in 2013) during his career. Additionally, he likes to employ a slow tempo, with every one of his 13 squads finishing among the bottom 100 nationally in pace. Another thing that sticks out on Brownell’s resume is how well his teams play defense no matter the personnel. Conversely, a Brownell-coached squad has finished among the nation’s top 120 offenses on only four occasions. In two of those instances, Brownell was in his first year at a school, indicating that he may have inherited some players who could score. And maybe it’s no coincidence that both of those units (2003 UNC-Wilmington & 2011 Clemson) earned NCAA Tournament bids, representing two of the only three trips Brownell has made to the Big Dance. The other takeaway from Brownell’s profile is that by his fourth year at each of his first two head coaching gigs, he was able to develop pretty good offenses after a couple of down years. That kind of turnaround, however, has not yet happened at Clemson.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Sean Moran, the RTC recruiting guru. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to discussing the recruitment of the top uncommitted players in the country. We also encourage you to check out his contributions at The Intentional Foul dedicated to recruiting coverage and analysis. You can also follow Sean at his Twitter account @Seanmohoops for up-to-date news from the high school and college hoops scene. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Note: Scout.com used for all player rankings.

Michigan State Lands Texas Sharpshooter

Michigan State missed out on in-state shooting guard Eric Davis when he announced his commitment to Texas on September 16. Nine days later Tom Izzo landed 6’5” senior shooting guard Matt McQuaid from Duncanville, Texas, a player who is currently rated No. 72 overall and the No. 23 shooting guard. As a junior, McQuaid committed to SMU before de-committing during the summer to re-open his recruitment. After setting the summer circuit on fire with his hot outside shooting, McQuaid quickly received interest from schools such as Michigan State, Indiana, and Creighton.

During the past two AAU seasons, McQuaid built a reputation as a stellar outside shooter. In 2013 he averaged 11.4 points on the Nike EYBL circuit, hitting 58-of-132 threes (43.9%), and this year he increased his scoring average to 15.6 points per game while hitting 45.1 percent of his outside shots. The soon-to be Spartan has range beyond the college three-point line to go along with a high release on his outside shot. While not known for a quick first step, McQuaid is working to improve his ability to attack the basket or find space for his pull-up jumper. Along with improving his quickness, McQuaid will also need to spend some time in the weight room over the next couple of years. Increased strength will certainly be beneficial for him on both sides of the ball to ensure that he does not become a defensive liability in Big Ten action.

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1. Pittsburgh suffered a significant blow when it announced that fifth-year senior Cameron Wright would be out for ten weeks after undergoing surgery on his broken left foot on Friday. Wright averaged 10.5 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game last season and is the Panthers’ leading returning scorer after scoring just 4.3 points per game as a sophomore. Wright is expected to return just before Christmas meaning that he will miss the team’s Maui Invitational trip and their  ACC/Big Ten Challenge match-up against Indiana, but should be back in time for the start of ACC play.
2. Ty Hudson, one of the top point guards in the class of 2015, committed to Clemson on Saturday giving Brad Brownell his first commitment in the class of 2015. Hudson committed while on his official visit at Clemson, but the bigger factor was probably the team’s new assistant–Ritchie Riley–who had recruited Hudson while he was an assistant at UAB and is widely attributed as the driving force behind Hudson’s decision to go to Clemson. Hudson had also been looking at Mississippi, Oklahoma State, and South Florida.
3. ESPN will have a new voice on-air next season as Jim Calhoun will be working with the network. Calhoun, who has been promoting a documentary in advance of its premiere next week, has not finalize the details of what his work will entail, but he is expected to be doing studio work at ESPN. We never know how coaches will translate to television, but after the Bob Knight experience the past few years we are looking forward to seeing Calhoun on TV particularly when he is talking about that team from upstate New York.
4. Carlton Bragg, a consensus top-20 player in the class of 2015, will take a visit to UCLA on October 31 after having an in-home visit with Steve Alford. Bragg, a 6’8″ power forward out of Ohio, has narrowed down his list to Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and UCLA. He already has two visits set up at Kansas (October 10) and Kentucky (October 17) so this would be his third planned visit, but according to reports Bragg does not plan on committing until the late signing period so we would not expect an announcement any time soon.
5. Former Louisville commit Antonio Blakeney has set-up visits at Missouri (October 17) and LSU (November 7). Blakeney as you may remember backed out of his commitment to Louisville less than two weeks after his initial commitment. As we have stated before, many suspect his recruitment is being influenced by Blakeney’s Nike AAU connections, which was obviously in conflict with Louisville’s adidas contract. The other two schools on Blakeney’s list–Kentucky and Oregon–are also Nike schools so you can figure that this will be followed closely by fans on all sides.