Clemson AD Graham Neff sent out a detailed letter to the basketball season ticket holders describing his plan and vision for the basketball program moving forward.
As we approach the beginning of “March Madness” and the most exciting part of the collegiate basketball season, I want to take a moment and share with you my views on basketball at Clemson.
First and foremost, thank you for your support all season long. There were some memorable moments in Littlejohn Coliseum, and we are grateful for all you do to create an incredible atmosphere. We should all be proud of the effort, commitment and resilience of our student-athletes – they never wavered in the face of challenges throughout the season.
Clemson Athletics has high expectations for all twenty-one of our varsity sports programs, and we do not – and will not – shy away from our pursuit of the highest levels of excellence and championships.
Going into a full four days of basketball tournaments, ESPN’s NCAA Tournament projections didn’t drop the Tigers a seed-line, maintaining a No. 6 spot within the East Region (Boston). Joe Lunardi pegs Clemson for a Pittsburgh pod and facing the play-in game winner between St. John’s and Indiana State, with Kentucky and Morehead State in the other regional matchup. Rival South Carolina is in the top half of the East bracket as a 5-seed and a 2-seed North Carolina might await the pod’s winner in the Sweet 16.
CBS Sports did drop Clemson to a 7-seed for the Memphis pod, matching up with Mississippi State and opposite a Baylor/Quinnipiac regional game in the Midwest Region (Detroit).
The Tigers fell in the metrics that had propped the resume, dropping nearly ten spots in average for predictive metrics for KenPom and BPI (33) and nine spots for the NCAA’s NET resume tool (35).
The strength of schedule is still Top 15 nationally (15). Clemson is one of 22 teams in the Top 36 with at least five NET Quadrant 1 wins. NC State’s impressive win over Syracuse on Wednesday also pushed the Wolfpack out of the Quadrant 3 loss territory for Clemson, where the Tigers have just one of those now (Georgia Tech; No. 124).
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