Brad Brownell '100 percent' believes Clemson is an NCAA Tournament team

Clemson added to its already impressive resume Thursday night in the ACC Tournament, pounding NC State 80-56 in Greensboro for its third double-digit win over the Wolfpack this season.

Clemson was squarely on the bubble entering the quarterfinal game of the ACC tourney, and head coach Brad Brownell believes his team made a statement that the Tigers deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament with their performance Thursday night.

“Yes, yes, 100 percent. One hundred percent,” Brownell said. “Like five Quad 1 wins. Who can you beat and where can you beat them, right? You don’t play those games at home. We’ve got four Quad 1 wins away from home.”

Clemson technically has four Quad 1 wins now and three away from home as its win at Virginia Tech is now a Quad 2 game. The Hokies have dropped to No. 76 in the NET. If they were 75, it would be a Quad 1 win.

Still, Clemson is 4-3 in Quad 1 games and has moved up to No. 51 in the NET after its thrashing of NC State in Greensboro.

As Brownell said, the Tigers have proven that they can beat good teams and can do it away from home.

Clemson has three blowout wins over the No. 45 team in the NET in NC State, won at a bubble team in Pittsburgh and at home against Duke — the No. 19 team in the NET. Out of conference, Clemson also beat another bubble team in Penn State.

“Yes, we should be in the tournament. Obviously I think that, and I’m pretty adamant about it,” Brownell said. “I thought we had to win today for sure, to make sure, but to me, we should be in.”

Those who poke holes in Clemson’s resume point to the bad losses the Tigers have, including two Quad 4 losses.

While it’s fair to point those out, and they have been holding down Clemson’s NET all season, the only true bad loss for Clemson in the past three months came at Louisville last month.

Clemson previously lost to Loyola-Chicago in December and South Carolina in November when star PJ Hall wasn’t close to 100 percent healthy.

“I guess we’ve had two or three bad days. We’ve had some injuries that impacted a couple of those days. If that doesn’t matter, whatever, that’s fine, but like in ’19 I was left out because we were 1-8 [in Quad 1 games] … and we were left out with a NET of 35,” Brownell said. “This year our NET is higher, but we’ve got five Quad 1 wins. We should be in the tournament.”

Clemson doesn’t just have impressive wins, it also has its fair share of blowout victories.

The Tigers have 10 ACC wins of at least 10 points and six by at least 20 points.

“This team, the way we’ve played, the margin of victory in most of our games, a lot of these ACC wins, beating [NC State] the way we did, who’s a great team, and they should be in — yes, we should be in
the tournament,” Brownell said.