COVID-19 Impact on Clemson Basketball
Clemson basketball had never seen a season end the way it did last week.
The Tigers warmed up for an ACC tournament game against Florida State last Thursday that they never played.
Less than 30 minutes before tip-off, ACC commissioner John Swofford officially shut down the league’s historical, premier hoops event in Greensboro, N.C., over growing concerns of the coronavirus.
“I wasn’t that surprised. I think it was the right decision,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said at the time. “The competitor in you is not happy. You want to go play. You certainly feel bad for your players, especially your seniors. This tournament just gets more special the longer you’re in it.”
Tournaments all over the country came to an abrupt halt that day, and it didn’t take much longer before the NCAA announced the cancellation of the men’s and women’s basketball events, as well as the NIT.
That left Clemson’s players and coaches nowhere to go but home with the feeling of unfinished business and sadness of not having a chance to win the first ACC tournament in school history.
“It’s hard. Kids train and coaches coach all year to be in these kinds of games, Brownell said. “These are the best games of the year."
It marked the first time since 1950 that Clemson’s season ended with a victory. The eighth-seeded Tigers knocked off ninth-seeded Miami 69-64 in their first-round ACC tourney game the day before everything stopped.
It left Clemson with a 16-15 record overall. The Tigers had three wins over top-6 opponents and overcame early-season injuries to at least work themselves into bubble conversations after winning four out of five games. A two-game losing skid to end the regular season, combined with bad losses to Virginia Tech and Miami before New Year's, all but put those talk to bed.
Still, it wasn't an easy realization for the players that they didn’t get to complete the season and, for some, their careers.
“Initially, guys were upset,” Brownell said. “And then it turned to sadness.”
March Sadness.
A couple of days later, several media reports said Brownell would return as coach for the 2020-21 season, and the next year’s team will be one of the most talented he’s coached in the last 10 years. Expectations will be very high inside Littlejohn Coliseum.
However, the sting of how it ended will take time to overcome. The Tigers weren’t going to make the NCAA tourney, barring a miraculous run, but they never got that opportunity to see if they could take down FSU, one of the better teams in college basketball, for a second time.
The NIT was a real possibility, and while it wouldn’t have been the postseason destination that Clemson had hoped for, it could’ve extended the careers of grad transfers Tevin Mack, Curran Scott and Paul Grinde.
While the NCAA will explore giving back eligibility to seniors in some sports, it's unclear exactly how basketball will factor into those decisions.
Freshmen guards Al-Amir Dawes and Alex Hemenway came on strong later in the season; a few more games might have pushed their development farther.
Those are benefits the Tigers won’t get, but as the world changed around them at a rapid pace, it taught new, unprecedented lessons to Brownell’s team.
“When we recruit these kids, we promise their families that we’re going to take care of them,” Brownell said. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”
