Misleading Facts AKA Cliff Ellis May have been our best

Jan 31, 2019, 5:09 PM

Basketball coach by the numbers.

Recently, i've seen multiple posters using Brownell's ACC record (best of any Clemson Basketball Coach)in his defense. To be clear, this is not a bash thread, but I did find that hard to believe and comprehend given the lack of NCAA appearances when compared to Barnes and Purnell who had shorter careers.

What I suspected is that the ACC is much more diluted from expansion than it was. Even now when they regularly put 6-8 teams in the tourney, by the numbers, it's not nearly as challenging as it was during Ellis coaching career.

Going back over Ellis 10 year span, ACC teams other than Clemson made the tourney 71% of the time! I knew it would be high but that was more than I expected.

Just a quick summary of the coaches ACC record vs relative strength of the league based on number of tournament teams in the league.

Cliff Ellis / .384 / 71%
Rick Barnes / .438 / 56%
Larry Shyatt / .250 / 50%
Oliver Purnell / .464 49% *
Brad Brownell / .479 / 47% *

As you can see the league was significantly stronger during Ellis tenure. Barnes time was notably stronger than his successors, but Purnell & Brownell have benefited from expansion and/or a down ACC.

*In addition, the league moved to a 16 game unbalanced schedule in 2004/2005 when the 11 & 12 teams were added. Then moved to an 18 game unbalanced schedule in 2013/2014 for the second round of expansion. This would weaken our ACC schedule more as you no longer played every team twice. Given the numbers, it does make Brownell and Purnell look relatively equal. It also would show that Barnes and in particular Ellis winning percentages were impacted more by the strength of the league than the others.

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tends to get the credence it deserves... for example, Skip Wise very well and probably is the single greatest basketball talent in Clemson history, but so many on this board probably never saw him and there is not much film on him to validate his game to those who never have seen him. I was at Clemson during the Ellis heyday, and as your numbers bore out, those were some of the best talents that the ACC has ever seen. the UNC rosters were stacked EVERY year, GaTech was a tough out, UVA had some of their all time greats, NC State had some of the best up and coming talent, Wake Forest was always a threat to beat the brakes off most everybody, Maryland was an NCAA power under Lefty Driesell, Duke was beginning to become what they are now, so with only 8 teams in the conference, every team played twice most of Ellis' years. This meant that you better be able to handle your business on your home court because road wins came at a premium...
I don't know if Ellis is our best coach of all time, but he surely faced the toughest competition at a time when the ACC was dominant...

Misleading Facts AKA Cliff Ellis May have been our best

I like your facts, but only what we personally witness

Re: Misleading Facts AKA Cliff Ellis May have been our best

He had a few good teams at Clemson.

I'm faxing this to Ben Milstead's desk @105.5 as we speak

Re: Misleading Facts AKA Cliff Ellis May have been our best

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