Quick Reminder: Brad Brownell Not Really Much of an X's/O's Guy on Offense

I'm not sure where the rumor started. I just remember reading it in the blogs somewhere, and then suddenly it everyone seemed to accept it as the gospel truth. Seriously, its almost like this idea was planted by the front office and bam! pretty soon everyone is a stenographer.

In an effort to inject some data into the assessment of Brownell's hiring, I took a quick look at the statistical profiles of his past squads (this was back when I had the time for this sort of thing...) No doubt he's led some great defenses, but on offense his team finished in the top 3 in his conference only once--last year (#3!!). Other than that, his offenses have hovered right around average in both the Colonial and Horizon Leagues. Not exactly the dominant mark of a young coaching wizard. In fact, Brownell's overall statistical team profiles eerily resemble the not-so-dearly departed Oliver Purnell, despite using starkly different strategies to construct stingy defenses and middling offenses.

The Michigan game is disheartening, but it reinforces my early views that we are on a rocky road this season with our best hopes likely lying in an 8-8 ACC season. I believe we have latent offensive talent on this team, but without a coaching staff capable of scheming to fit or develop the talent we are in for a long season of crappy offensive displays. Kind of like the last several years, but less frantic. Much, much less frantic. Glacial.

Clemben Addition: This is the perfect game to shut up Tanner Smith enthusiasts. 1-7 and 0-5 from 3 pt. land. 4 fouls and beat to the basket on multiple occasions (not that anyone was rotating on defense so its not all his fault). We really need Noel Johnson to step up and take half of Tanner's minutes or ACC play will get ugly. Lucky for us Wake and GT stink. Miami, Virginia Tech and FSU are underachieving. Roy Williams has Harrison Barnes and can't right the ship (I love that Barnes was picked as a preaseason All-American??, would have been a top draft pick in NBA but is struggling in college). Maryland and NC State I don't know enough about but are beatable and only Virginia seems to have improved much since last year. Yes, Duke is back to being unstoppable but our schedule is favorable.

This loss to Michigan at home on national TV really does sting though. We have to hope that Michigan continues to improve in the Big Ten. We really need to win our next two games to stay in the NCAA hunt if we go 8-8 in ACC play. Losing to South Carolina in the 3 major sports this year is unacceptable Barker. Don't let the door hit you on the way out Terry Don. How about we get an athletic director with a normal name for a change? That would mean Billy D'Andrea would be disqualified. Hooray!

One thing to remember is that expanded brackets (which I absolutely abhor--64 was a great number) might really benefit us this year. Still unless this team improves fundamentally, its going to be a long year. Glacial sounds about right.

A Little More on Virgina; Assorted Thoughts

I don't have anything to add to ClemBen's succinct take below, but I just wanted to show the game chart from Saturday afternoon:

College Basketball

(I can't find win probability charts, but this is pretty close. I assume they are using Bill James' formula to calculate safe leads, but I might be wrong.)

That's beautiful domination right there--the game was unofficially over at 9:38 to go in the game when Clemson jumped up 60-30. When I'm watching a game with two non-Clemson teams, I often find myself rooting for the team that falls behind just 'cause I want to see a close game. But when it comes to Clemson, I want every game to be like last Saturday's game. (Just to be clear, the converse is true for any game involving USuCk. I quite enjoy rooting for the other team to pile on the points...)

A few bullet points touching on Virginia and beyond:

• I want to take a second and recognize a trying week of basketball for Virginia. They really got burned by the weather: the cancellation of the Maryland game leaving them in the undesirable position of playing 4 games over a span of 8 days. Not that I think that playing one less game would have made enough of a difference on Saturday, but Virginia was hanging by the end of the first ten minutes. Tough to blame them for a lack of endurance, no team should have to prepare for that kind of brutal schedule. At any rate, on normal rest I suspect Virginia would have come a lot closer to the 60+ points I thought they would in the preview.
• Lots of people have commented on the improved play underneath. I would agree to an extent--we haven't seen the bad finishes on easy shots in the three game win streak that we saw when during the three game losing streak. I'm not sold on any increased ability to create points underneath, however. Virginia and Miami are average-to-middling at defending the 2-point shot, so we should be expecting Trevor Booker to put up some big numbers.
• On that note, mea culpa Jerai Grant, again. I should make disparaging remarks about him before every game, because he always makes me look stupid when I write something snide about him in the preview. It was really a pretty impressive performance--Grant wasn't just cleaning up the garbage on the offensive board (as I noted, Virginia is good at keeping teams off the offensive glass and true to form, we only picked up 5 offensive rebounds in the game. Helps that we shot 58% from the floor, of course), he was finding open spaces underneath and finishing at the rim. If he keeps things up, I may have to re-evaluate my opinion of him as an athletic role player that contributes a little on defense, a little on offense. He's not going to be a guy to build an offense or defense around, but he's turning into a valuable supporting player that complements well better players on the floor.
• Again, back to point #2. I know its exciting to watch Clemson actually make some shots inside, but let's keep in mind that Virginia and Miami aren't great teams at defending the shot. Its worth noting that while Grant had a good game (in which he did manage a lot of garbage buckets), FSU managed to shut down Booker pretty effectively. I still feel the FSU game was won on the strength of our outside shooting. While FSU defends the inside shot well, they have struggled quite a bit against the outside shot. I'm not going to get excited about an offensive resurgence until we look better against a team that typically holds their opponents to a low effective field goal percentage, the kind of team that we seem to have struggled against the most this season (think Duke, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech). Maryland on the road should be a good test, while they do show something of a split by defending quite a bit better against the 2-point shot relative to the 3-point shot, it's not as dramatic as the difference in Florida State's defense.
• Let me hand out some credit to the offense in addition to throwing out some caution, though. Others have pointed out Clemson's better long-range shooting, but I would also point out that we've incrementally cut down on our stupid turnovers, gotten to the line a little more often, and shot better from the free throw line. Going from 64% to almost 68% since the beginning of February might not sound like much, but for this late in the season its an accomplishment.
• I think 8-8 should get any ACC team into the tournament this year, but for whatever reason the national perception of the ACC is at odds with reality. I think that means a maximum of six teams from the ACC, and I'm worried if there are multiple 8-8 teams at the end of the year, the #7 team gets the shaft. For that reason, Clemson needs to aim for a 9-7 finish just to be safe, which means stealing one on the road in addition to beating a tough (and at this point, significantly underrated) GT team at home on two days' rest. While things look better than they did a couple of weeks ago, nothing is assured at this point.

Moving Right Along: Post game Virginia

This was a great win for us. We easily handled a much improved Virginia Cavaliers team and beat them by a large margin--no playing down to our competition. I like Bennett as a coach and think Virginia will be a formidable foe in the near future, they were just gassed for this game and didn't expect TBooker and JGrant to have 14 and 18 points respectively. We dominated inside and got some great minutes from Milton Jennings (thank you!!). Purnell is starting to use the freshman more and more which really bodes well for next season, Noel Johnson continues to struggle however which is disappointing. I was also really disappointed with some bonehead turnovers in this game, many of which involved Tanner and some from Stitt. Its those unforced turnovers that kill us against better teams.

If our inside guys can keep playing at a high level, Booker had some sweet pure post moves today, and we knock down 35% from three point range--we can hang with anyone in the country. I think that the week long break was really helpful--we had fresher legs and we need it for these upcoming road games. Looking back at our predictions early on--9-7 is still within our grasp as well as making it to the tourney and winning at least one game. That would be an improvement from last year. What we really need is to peak at the right time--that means the time to finally gel as a team has come. Milt is showing life, the inside game is solid, we play pretty good D, the FT shooting has improved--all key things to continue on the road. What we need to see a little more improvement on to push us into that upper echelon is decreased turnovers, better 3pt shooting, and toughness on the road.

Right now I think we can go 9-7, win one game in the ACC and NCAA tournaments. Lets make it happen Tigers!!