By Will Vandervort

It’s crazy to think about, but there is always one statistic that truly defines a team’s season. That statistic this year for the Clemson men’s basketball team was charges taken, or the lack thereof that is.

Clemson, whose season ended last week in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, recorded only five charges all year. That statistic was without a doubt the worst in the ACC and perhaps the worst in the country.

“That’s not good,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “It shows a little lack of toughness. I did not coach that well enough, obviously. Some of that is on me.”

In the 23 seasons prior to this year, Clemson averaged 35.9 charges taken per season. The lowest mark before the 2012-‘13 season was in 1990-’91 and 1991-’92, when those Clemson teams recorded just 19 charges.

By the way, the highest mark came in Brownell’s first season at Clemson when the 2010-’11 Tigers drew 61 charges.

“I think Tanner Smith was a natural at trying to do that so he probably took a great deal of pride in that and it became part of his mantra and it probably rubbed off on some other players,” Brownell said. “I don’t think we really had anybody that did that.”

Brownell tried to get his players this year to take a few more charges. He mentioned it to senior Devin Booker a couple of times, but he knew it really was not in Booker’s personality or style to take charges.

“To be honest, he needed to do that some because you have to have ways to protect the basket,” Brownell said. “You are either a shot blocker or you take charges. We really did not do much of that. We had some shot blocking. K.J. (McDaniels) blocked some shots and Book blocked some shots, but there were many instances where we need to do a better job of (taking charges).

“There will not be five on there next year.”

Clemson’s lack of setting charges or toughness defined the 2012-‘13 season and why it had its first losing season since the 2003-’04 year.  It also explains a lot on why the Tigers did not handle adversity well and lost so many close games.

In all, 12 of Clemson’s 18 losses were in single digits and six of those were by five points or less.

“We had rough patches and did not handle those situations well and did not come out of those situations,” Brownell said. “We did not have a guy on our team that responded when challenged sometimes to those things.

“We lost confidence throughout the year a little bit. In the last month, I still thought we played some good basketball at times. We played some good halves, but we just could not put a full forty minutes together. Our shooting probably contributed to stress on our defense. Obviously, when you have trouble scoring, it makes everything a little more difficult.”

In 23 seasons prior to the 2012-’13 season, Clemson averaged 35.9 charges taken per season. Below is a year-by-year rundown:

89-90 – 30
90-91 – 19
91-92 – 19
92-93 – 26
93-94 – 24
94-95 – 31
95-96 – 22
96-97 – 54
97-98 – 33
98-99 – 46
99-00 – 47
00-01 – 32
01-02 – 40
02-03 – 33
03-04 – 40
04-05 – 39
05-06 – 30
06-07 – 45
07-08 – 42
08-09 – 49
09-10 – 41
10-11 – 61
11-12 – 24
12-13 – 5