Brad Brownell explains the 'weird' feeling being on NCAA Tournament bubble as third best ACC team

Clemson basketball finished the regular season as the ACC’s third-ranked team. Now, usually, finishing that high in that conference would make you a shoo-in for the NCAA men’s tournament in March. Unfortunately, that is not the case for Brad Brownell’s squad. A handful of bracketology experts have Clemson just outside this year’s tournament. And that feels ‘weird’ to Brownell.

“Yeah, frustrating a little bit. Yeah, it is, and you can’t control it. So most of the time, I haven’t thought much about it,” said Brownell. “It’s hard because there’s always there’s a blemish on everybody’s resume, and there’s usually something good on everybody’s resume. I do think we haven’t had as many quad-one opportunities as we would like, as we get most years. Of our four quad-one wins, right now, three of them are road wins, which I think is significant because it is very hard to win on the road against quality teams. And that’s part of where this whole thing came from — who can you beat? That’s part of it.”

The issue for Clemson this season has not been who they have beaten but who they have lost to. The Tigers have losses to Louisville, Boston College, and South Carolina. All three of which rank towards the bottom of their respective conferences. Something that Brownell is fully aware of.

“Our stain is we’ve lost to a couple of teams that haven’t had good years. But we’ve certainly have proved that we can beat good teams and beat them away from home. I think we’ve only had one quad-one home game; it was the Duke game. So all of our quad-one opportunities, and there been seven right now, six of them have either been neutral or away. And we’re 3-3 in those and then 1-0 in the home game. So, that, I think, is significant.

“I think we’re the only one (in) one of the projections; we’re the only one with a winning record in quad-one. I do think there are some things in our favor, but you gotta look for them. It’s what’s worse a bad day or what’s better a couple of good days, right? What are you going to examine?”

If the name of the game is winning, Clemson has done a lot of that this season. The Tigers finished off the regular season with a 22-9 overall record and 14-6 in conference play. And because they defeated both Duke and Pittsburgh earlier in the season, they own the tiebreaker over both programs, who also finished 14-6 in the ACC.

“I think some of it is just ringing in my ears, Jay Bilas. Who can you beat? You gotta prove that you can beat tournament teams. Well, we’ve certainly proved that, and there is even some teams in our league that we’ve beaten that seem to be in. So, the best thing we can do is go play well this weekend and take care of our own business. It is strange to be sitting here third in the ACC and still a little bit on pins and needles.”

From here, as Brownell pointed out, all Clemson can do is take care of business and the ACC tournament and let the decision-makers do the rest. But after an impressive season put together by the Tigers, it would be a shame if one of the better teams in the ACC missed the NCAA tournament.