CLEMSON – Things are going well for head coach Brad Brownell and the Clemson men’s basketball team in the recruiting process, and their run to the Elite Eight has made an impact.
Clemson’s historic NCAA Tournament run ended on the last day of March when the No. 6 Tigers fell to the No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide 89-82 in the Elite Eight inside Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The Tigers finished the season with a 24-12 record, their best since 2017-18 (25-10), also a Sweet Sixteen team.
“The Elite Eight race was fantastic. I am very proud of our players. We played very high-level basketball in the tournament,” Brownell said a few weeks ago. “In all three games we beat some outstanding teams, teams that were playing very well and had a chance to get to the Final Four.”
The Tigers lost Jack Clark, RJ Godfrey, Josh Beadle and Alex Hemenway to the transfer portal, while PJ Hall and Joe Girard moved to the next level. There is plenty of talent to replace, but Brownell has been busy over the last month rebuilding his roster.
We’ve heard that guard Chase Hunter, the catalyst for the NCAA Tournament run, is leaning toward returning, and if he returns, he’ll join Cincinnati transfer Viktor Lakhin, Duke transfer Christian Reeves, Boston College, Jaeden Zackery, and Illinois State transfer. Myles Foster.
The good news continued to come late in the week when the Tigers landed a commitment from a legacy recruit, as Lake Norman High (Mooresville, N.C.) power forward/center Trent Steinour announced his verbal commitment to Clemson. Steinour is the grandson of Tigers legend Randy Mahaffey, a first-team All-ACC player in 1966-67.
Did the deep NCAA tournament help in recruiting?
“It’s helped to some extent, there’s no doubt it’s helped,” Brownell said. “With the recent success, teams are more familiar with you from the standpoint of, hey, yeah, we just saw you play. However, it is not the end.
“When you start adding wins and now you put in a Sweet Sixteen and an Elite 8, another tournament held in the last seven years, you are starting to separate yourself from a lot of people who would surprise you.”
Winning isn’t everything in today’s college basketball landscape.
“Everyone is going to study their situation and there are many factors involved in transfers. Winning is part of it, playing time, NIL, facilities, the opportunity to play at the next level, the academics eventually come depending on the age of the kid,” Brownell said. “But it certainly has helped.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback and people following us, and when you start to dig deeper and when you have Zoom conversations with people and you start putting slides of recent successes on there, and you start comparing them to others, people, people “It’s surprising that we did so well.”
Things are looking up for the Tigers.
“I’m happy there’s a lot of positive momentum with our program. It started last year with the team winning 14 ACC games and the leadership of Hunter Tyson, I think that gave this team a huge confidence boost and it continued throughout this season,” Brownell said. “I’m also very happy that our fan base can enjoy those couple of weeks. It was amazing just to look back and see everyone celebrating here. We really had our heads down, we were so busy that sometimes it was hard to enjoy it. “You were working very hard, and even now, I still haven’t been able to enjoy it as much as I would like, but they are tremendous achievements.”
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