Brownell talks narratives and what his team needs to do to make NCAAs now

Brad Brownell isn't sure how the NCAA will judge his team, but he knows they need to finish 'very strong.'

by Brandon Rink - Staff Writer - Mon Feb 20 12:32:05 GMT-05:00 2023

Brad Brownell doesn’t know exactly how the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament committee will make its call come March, but he is sure his team needs to play winning basketball down the stretch.

His Tigers fell to 19-8 and 11-5 in ACC action with Saturday’s 83-73 loss at Louisville, after a program-best 10-1 league start that extended into late January. The defeat fell into the NCAA NET metric’s Quadrant 4, a third this season, where the Cardinals rank No. 308 in the NET overall and Clemson is No. 81 (from as high as No. 66 last week).

After hosting Syracuse on Wednesday (a NET Q3 game), Clemson has back-to-back NET Quad 1 victory opportunities at NC State on Saturday and at Virginia the next Tuesday.

How exactly everything will weigh in the committee's eye is something Brownell doesn’t have a good handle on.

“I think it’s year to year. I think that’s the frustrating thing maybe, is you don’t know exactly what they’re using, right? Is it the number Quad 1 wins you have? Bad losses? NET rating? I think that’s the frustrating part, and I’ve said this, it’s a hard job,” Brownell said on the ACC coaches media Zoom call on Monday. “There are lot of teams that are all really good and a lot of teams that are very similar. And the bad thing is, a little bit, in our league situation is we kinda do all our non-league in November and December when a lot of teams are building and we’re trying to evaluate – I don’t know how you evaluate league-to-league when we don’t play each other after December 15.”

In the 2019 season, Clemson was 19-13 overall and 9-9 ACC play but ranked 35th in the NET rankings going into NCAA Tournament unveiling, but it was not even regarded among the first four out on Selection Sunday.

In the 2021 pandemic-affected campaign, Clemson went 16-7 and 10-6 in league play, finishing with a No. 45 NET rating and was seeded seventh in a regional. That year, the Tigers went 3-7 against Q1 teams but 7-0 against Q2 with only a single Q4 game even played (1-0).

This season, Clemson is fighting against a schedule rated 344th in the non-conference with only an 8-3 record in Q4 games. The Tigers’ strongest data point is already matching the program’s single-season best for conference wins, and Brownell believes the ACC is stronger than it’s being regarded currently.

“It’s a little frustrating and obviously the last couple of weeks, we’ve put ourselves in this situation,” he said. “So we have to take responsibility for that, me specifically as the head coach. Having said that, I think some of the early-season losses or whatnot – you can talk about why PJ’s not 100% or all that (PJ Hall working back from injury earlier in the season), I don’t know that that matters, so at the end of the day you have a chance to play yourself in if you play well enough down the stretch to do it. As much as anything, I’m maybe more frustrated with the narrative of the league, and I get it a little bit. I think the teams in our league, the eight, nine or ten top teams in our league that are really played well – we can all play with the best teams in just about any league.

“So I don’t know that all that matters. It’s like it’s forgotten that we (the ACC) won the Big Ten Challenge. So, obviously our team matched up head-to-head with another league who seems to be viewed higher and we won the matchup. So I’m more frustrated by that narrative.”

For his team, however, Brownell knows they have to play well for a Big Dance invite.

“That’s not for me to say,” Brownell said on the state of his team’s NCAA resume. “Obviously we have to win more games. We need some of these games on the road. We need to finish very strong. We’ve got four regular-season (games) and then the ACC Tournament, we need to finish strong. The last three weeks, we haven’t played quite as well. We have had a couple of injuries. Hopefully Alex (Hemenway) can get going a little bit. He’s still battling the foot and that hurts us. Would love to have an older guy coming off the bench that could help us a little more offensively.

“Like a lot of teams, we’re one of many on the list – on the bubble – whatever it is and you’ve got to finish strong to get that done. What that means exactly, I don’t know that anybody knows.”

Clemson NCAA Tournament profile

Record: 19-8

KPI: 65

SOR (Strength of record): 69

BPI: 69

KenPom: 83

Sagarin: 71

NET: 81

Record vs. NET Q1: 3-2 (win over No. 26 Duke at home and No. 48 Pitt and No. 63 Virginia Tech on the road)

Q4 losses: 3 (at No. 242 South Carolina, in neutral site game with No. 266 Loyola-Chicago and on the road at No. 308 Louisville)

NET SOS: 124

NON-CON SOS: 344