Brad Brownell addresses how tournament snub could impact Clemson's non-conference scheduling

Despite finishing 23-10 with a 14-6 mark in ACC play, Clemson was left out of the NCAA Tournament and coach Brad Brownell believes there were a series of unfortunate events with Clemson’s non-conference scheduling that ultimately led to that outcome.

Chief among them was Clemson’s inability to control for certain things on its schedule, like a game against California that ended up worth virtually nothing or a road game against lowly Louisville that came when the Cardinals were celebrating their 2013 national title team.

“This year we end up being penalized, we lose to Iowa on a tough call at the end of a game and we play Cal — Mark Fox one of my best friends — and they happen to have a million injuries and finish 300,” Brownell said. “We didn’t schedule that to get a 300 RPI game, it just fell in our lap.

“South Carolina‘s in a rebuild, they have a bad year. Beat us, but they’re rebuilding so they’re not as strong. Probably the worst NET team of South Carolina since I’ve been here. Happens to be this year.”

Some of that you can control for with the schedule. If you anticipate needing some juice from your non-conference schedule, you can schedule some difficult opponents.

But Brownell argues the ACC should typically put you in a position where you don’t have to create a brutal non-conference schedule.

“First of all it may change year to year based on your team and what league you’re in,” Brownell said. “The easiest example is Gonzaga, right, because Gonzaga plays in the WCC, maybe not quite as strong as some of the Power 5 leagues top to bottom. So they schedule like crazy in the non-conference to make sure they’re getting enough big-time games.

“Most years when you’re in the SEC, the Big Ten, the ACC, you’re going to get enough Quad 1 and Quad 2 games that you’re going to still try to find a few in the non-conference, but you’re not going to go load up with eight. Half of that, usually. Five or six.”

Is Clemson at a disadvantage schedule-wise?

One thing Brownell pointed to as part of his frustration is that the program doesn’t get some of the favorable tournament draws that other ACC programs do as part of Clemson’s non-conference scheduling.

“The hard part sometimes with Clemson, and this is a complaint that I’ve stated to the league office for years, we’re not all treated the same in the league,” Brownell said. “In the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, I mean I’ve been the head coach at Clemson for 13 years. I find it unbelievably ironic that in one of those years we can’t play Indiana. I’m from southern Indiana, like that’s not a good TV story? We can’t sell that? They’re usually one of the best teams in the Big Ten, we can’t bring them to Clemson one time? Or I can’t go back to Indiana, or Purdue for that matter? Those are challenging games that obviously if we were to win them are very rewarding.

“It’s the same with some of the non-conference tournaments. Battle 4 Atlantis and the Maui Classic. Those are rotated every four years but (North) Carolina and Duke and a lot of the bigger-name basketball program bluebloods, they get to go to all those more than we really ever do, and so we’ve got to go find other things.”

Clemson has done its part scheduling-wise

As Brownell points out, Clemson did what it could to ensure it had five to six difficult non-conference games. Some of them simply ended up not helping much.

“We tried to schedule two neutral-site games,” he said. “We actually took away a home game this year to schedule two neutral-site games against Loyola and Richmond, two teams that have perennially been Quad 2, even Quad 1 games and they’re 3 and 4 this year. I mean Loyola and Richmond have pretty good pedigree.

“My point to that is it’s a challenge and we’re not getting a lot of help. And I think that’s something that I’ve been beating the drum on for years that’s fallen on deaf ears sometimes. I’m hopeful it’s going to get changed a little bit because the league getting five teams in recently here all the time, it’s not enough. And I don’t think it’s right, I think there should be more.”

One of Brownell’s other chief complaints is that it seems leagues can get locked into a certain number of NCAA Tournament slots based on how the metrics stack up.

The ACC didn’t have strong metrics this season, and it was Clemson who paid the price, in part because Clemson’s non-conference scheduling also came out on the unlucky side.

“There’s a fine line when you go overboard with the metrics with once you start playing in a league that has really good metrics it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose that many,” Brownell said. “You just play. You’re actually in a more dangerous position when you’re Clemson and we’re playing some league teams that don’t have good metrics.

“The night we played Louisville there were 16,000 people there, they were celebrating the 2013 team and it wasn’t the same as all the other times I watched Louisville play at home. There was juice and those dudes played good and all that game can do is hurt you, and we had some other games like that.”

Ultimately, Brownell takes ownership

At the end of the day, the schedule will fall out how it may. Clemson’s non-conference scheduling included some abnormally bad luck this season, but Brownell still recognizes his squad could have controlled the outcome.

Avoid a loss to Louisville here. Secure a quality win there.

“We had a couple bad things happen, we’ve got to handle our business,” Brownell said. “I’ve stated that. At the end of the day if we just won one more game we’re probably in, but it’s not quite as easy as everybody thinks it is. And sometimes there’s things that you schedule ahead of time that just you can’t control whether the other team is as good as you thought they would be or they have been.”