'Why Not More?': Clemson isn't intimidated by Kansas, but hungry for more
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The promotional yearly rate is ending soon so act now and save!CLEMSON -- The locker room was silent.
Almost as quiet as Clemson’s campus is right now while everyone is on Spring Break.
There was a calm, focused demeanor for Brad Brownell’s Tigers before they took the floor against Auburn in the round of 32.
48 hours before, the team was joking, laughing, and having fun as they normally do in part, Brownell noted, due to the late tip-off against New Mexico State. Clemson was so eager to play, Brownell had to tell his players to calm down because of how overstimulated they were before warmups.
Clemson handled its first game in the NCAA Tournament in seven years by defeating the Aggies by 11 points. Another step forward.
But in preparation for its game against a 26-win Auburn team, the mood was Clemson still had some business left to handle.
“Sunday was, ‘hey, we know what we need to do. We feel good about what we are doing. Let’s just go do it. Let’s take care of business.’ It gave me a confidence that our team was going to play well,” Brownell said.
“The last thing I told them was, ‘do your job. All we got to do is do our job. If we do our job, we’re going to win. We are better than Auburn.’"
The Tigers handled their business again, this time in dominating fashion in their best performance of the season. The team that was supposed to be the popular upset pick in the first round beat the SEC co-champions by 31 and made it to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 21 years.
All eyes then turned to a new challenge in Omaha, Nebraska. A No.1-seeded Kansas program that is no stranger to the game’s biggest stages awaits.
A program that’s made the NCAA Tournament 34 of the last 35 years.
A program that’s made it to the Sweet Sixteen 13 times since 2000.
A program that’s been to more Final Fours (14) than Clemson has tournament appearances (12).
The sport that thrives on Kansas’ campus in Lawrence is basketball. Over 16,000 people will pack Allen Fieldhouse for a team practice at midnight in November while Clemson’s basketball program is an afterthought amidst Dabo Swinney’s national championship and consistent success.
Of the four coaches remaining in the Midwest Region, three of them have already cemented themselves as legends of the game and their craft. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, and Kansas’ Bill Self have a combined seven national titles, 21 Final Fours, and 34 regular season conference titles.
Then there’s Brownell from little ol’ Clemson.
“Nobody is going to know who I am,” Brownell said after the win against Auburn.
“I don’t look down at the other end when we’re coaching. That’s not good for my mental health.”
As Clemson takes the floor in Omaha as the underdogs yet again, an arena filled with Jayhawk fans will have made the three-hour trek. Chants of “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” will try to rock Clemson’s world.
On paper, Clemson may seem like a David who is about to face one of college basketball’s blue-blooded Goliaths. But Brownell, a Midwest basketball junkie, believes his team won’t be intimidated by the stage and the team wearing the historical white and blue.
The Tigers aren’t scared of the opportunity at hand.
On a weekly basis, Brownell and his team prepare for battle against elite competition in the ACC. Teams like Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia have given the Tigers a blueprint for what to expect and how to prepare against well-coached teams. Clemson’s 11 ACC wins didn’t come easy (Well, except for Pittsburgh).
This isn’t Sister Jean's Cinderella team. The Tigers shouldn't be taken lightly.
“Everybody views us as Cinderella or whatever, but we play in the ACC every year. That’s our conference. We see some pretty good players; we see some pretty good teams every year multiple times,” Brownell said.
“Our guys aren’t going to be shocked with the talent level we are playing against. We play against that on a regular basis.”
The preparations this week for the biggest stage Clemson basketball has been on in recent memory has been a normal routine. All is quiet on the Clemson front, so the team has taken its time to rest and collect themselves from their trip out west to San Diego.
It doesn’t matter who Brownell’s troops are going to war against. How well they prepare for the game ahead is what makes them dynamite.
The motto Brownell has preached since the beginning of the season has been “dream big, focus small.” The team knew they were a pretty decent club coming home from their trip from Spain, but the players had no idea what they were capable of until they got into the heart of the nonconference schedule.
“I think they knew, ‘hey, we have a chance. We are pretty good.’ You got to have a little bit of evidence. Through the nonconference season, that’s when it all changed,” Brownell noted. “When we won at Ohio State and Florida, there was a confidence that started to come in with this group… Believing we could win has brought us closer together.”
And that belief has been with this team all season long no matter the circumstances.
Donte Grantham went down, they adjusted and kept pushing. Shelton Mitchell went down, they rode out the storm of three consecutive losses, but pushed their way back, and finished the regular season well.
Clemson has always been confident, but after two consecutive tournament wins, the confidence is at a season-high. As Grantham said before the Tournament began when Clemson was on upset alert, “we are always going to get slept on and continue to get slept on.”
Not many gave Clemson a chance to make it this far, and not many expect them to make it any further. That’s fine. That’s the way Clemson wants it to be.
But you won’t find this Clemson team backing down now. Not after the weekend season, they just had. The Tigers may not be used to this kind of stage like Kansas is, but their confidence on the court and prior experience from this season will compensate.
Now is not the time for fear.
“We are used to playing well-coached teams. That part is not going to bother us,” Brownell said. “I don’t know if we will play well or not - I think we will. But it won’t be that we are intimidated.”
Last year, Clemson couldn’t catch a break. The Tigers got their hearts ripped out and had to respond week after week even though the same results continued to happen. Those experiences were extremely difficult to come back from but have made them stronger now.
How quickly things change in a year.
Brownell said this team has bought in since the beginning, which is what has made this run so special and has made his job look seemingly easy. There has been a hunger to this team once they tasted sweet victory on the winning side of things.
A hunger to be coached. A hunger to get better. A hunger for more.
Even though Brownell wishes students could have been on campus and welcomed them home the way Clemson football fans welcomed their team home after a national championship loss, this is not the time to pat themselves on the back for the job they have done.
There is still business left to handle. A job still to be done.
“I’ve always dreamed of taking a team to the Final Four,” Brownell said to the packed media room in Clemson on Monday. “It’s what I want to do as a coach and try to win a national championship. I said that in my interview here… I think we can do it.
“When this is over, we’ll (pat ourselves on the back) for sure, but right now it’s like, 'let’s get back in there and watch more Kansas film and figure out how to win.' I think we’re excited that we went to the Sweet 16 and we don’t do that here at Clemson very often.
But why not more?”