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We have written several stories about Clemson Tigers men’s basketball in recent weeks at All Sports Discussion.
We wrote about the need to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
We wrote about the need for Clemson to beat North Carolina to improve its NCAA Tournament prospects.
We wrote about the way Brad Brownell is perceived by the Clemson fan base.
Those stories have already been written. Now we arrive at a different story: the reality that Clemson, barring a Selection Sunday shocker (which DOES occur from time to time), will not make the 2019 NCAA Tournament. It is not impossible, but it is certainly very hard to imagine the Tigers making the field of 68 at this point. Dayton is as good as they can hope for in the First Four.
If Clemson is relegated to a No. 1 seed in the NIT, Wednesday’s loss to North Carolina State at the ACC Tournament in Charlotte obviously drove the final nail into the coffin. However, one must make a fundamental point about the nature of college basketball, something which is easy to lose track of during March Madness, when a lot more casual sports fans are paying attention: NOVEMBER BASKETBALL MATTERS. THE WHOLE SEASON MATTERS.
In late November, Clemson folks are rightly focused on beating the snot out of South Carolina on the gridiron. In early December, they are focused on winning the ACC championship and moving to the College Football Playoff.
It is in those late-autumn weeks when Clemson lost crucial leverage in the pursuit of an NCAA at-large bid.
In the Cayman Islands, Clemson lost to Creighton and Nebraska. Those are/were not terrible teams, but Clemson — as an ACC school which depends on that ACC brand to carry a certain amount of weight in the room for a 50-50 debate — has to win those kinds of games to trumpet a true NCAA-worthy resume.
Lipscomb was Clemson’s best non-conference win. Lipscomb is a good team; the emphasis is not that Lipscomb ISN’T a good win. That was a quality win for Brownell and Co. The emphasis is that Clemson lost its main non-conference games against power-conference opponents: Creighton, Nebraska, and also Mississippi State.
I separate Creighton and Nebraska from Mississippi State because MSU turned itself into a 5- or 6-seed-level NCAA Tournament team. Clemson was plainly beaten by a better team when it lost to the Bulldogs on a neutral court in late autumn.
Those Creighton and Nebraska losses — along with the road loss in ACC play at Miami — truly cooked Clemson relative to the at-large chase. The loss to N.C. State in the ACC Tournament was more a product of playing in a low-margin situation.
If Clemson had beaten Creighton and Nebraska, it wouldn’t have had such a small margin for error heading into this ACC Tournament.
November matters. The whole season matters… even at football schools which pay attention to football in late November.
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