By Will Vandervort

During a staff meeting a few years back, one of Brad Brownell’s assistant coaches brought up the idea of maybe going over to Italy one summer to play basketball.

By that time some mid-major teams had already made the trip and gained some valuable experience both on and off the court. Last year Duke and Brownell’s old team, Wright State, played in Italy. This year, Brownell’s Clemson Tigers will make the trip.

Clemson will be in Italy August 8-18.

“The trip can be good for everybody,” Brownell said in an exclusive interview with The Clemson Insider last week. “Every team has its own unique identity. We kind of planned for it this year, knowing that we are going to be really young and lose our two seniors.

“It’s kind of a new regime, if you will, coming in. It will be a way for these guys to come in and kind of develop their own identity.”

The NCAA allows college basketball teams to play on foreign soil once every four years. Teams that schedule games outside the United States can practice for as many as 10 days during the summer to prepare for that overseas trip.

After working through the first-summer session in individual workouts, Brownell has given his players, with the exception of freshmen Austin Ajukwa and Patrick Rooks, three weeks off before the trip. They will report back to campus in mid-July where they will take a class that coincides with the trip to Italy before beginning their 10 practices as a team at the end of the month.

The trip to Italy will not be to just gain experience on the basketball court, but all so one in which they will gain college credit, too.

“We will do some sightseeing together as a group, and there will be some things they do in responsibility of their course,” Brownell said. “It’s not like you are going over there with the mindset that winning the game is the be all and end all.

“If you have a game that night, it’s not like you are not going to be spending the day sightseeing and walking around and seeing Italy. Obviously, you are going to do that. Is it going to take a little out of your guys, probably, but that is fine. It’s more about the life-long learning experience.”

In all, the Tigers will play four games as they visit the cities of Rome, Venice, Florence and Lake Como.

“It is a different kind of deal,” the Clemson coach said. “The games are certainly going to be important. We are going to point to the games to play well, but at the end of the day, we want our guys to have a good experience. We want them to bond and we want them to grow, while gaining a lot of positive experiences from the trip. Basketball is part of it, but it is only going to be a smaller part of it.”

But don’t get Brownell wrong, getting better as a basketball team is important. That’s why when the idea came up a few years back he figured it was best they wait until 2013 to make the trip. The 2013-’14 Clemson basketball team has no seniors, while as many as nine freshmen and sophomores will be expected to play a big role on the team.

“We were not in position to do it a few years ago,” he said. “I just thought this was the perfect time for this team, knowing we were going to be in this situation, where we were going to be young for a couple of years.

“We thought about doing it last year when we started planning this trip. But, we felt like it would be better this year with no seniors and a whole new crew trying to figure things out. I think it is a good time for us.”

Brownell hopes a trip like this can also bring the team closer together, which sometimes was missing, for whatever the reason, on last year’s squad.

“Hopefully, we will begin to see some guys develop as leaders during the trip,” he said. “By spending a good deal of time together, hopefully it will build some camaraderie and morale on this team.

“I think that will be really good and I think that’s one of the best things about the trip. Certainly the practices are fine and getting to play some games and see some different things will be good, but I think as much as anything, the time together, the life experiences and watching those guys interact with each other and develop an identity and personality within your team is as important as anything right now.”

Since they will be playing overseas, Brownell will have to get his players familiar with the rules of the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA). In English, it is International Basketball Federation.

The international game is played a little more physical, the court is a little smaller, the lane is different and the shot clock is 24 seconds. Also, there are differences in which certain rules are called.

“It will be a little hard, and it will be different. We will not be used to it,” Brownell said. “Traveling is a big thing over there and that is hard for Americans because of the strong-side pivot we do and kind of grew up with. They call traveling over there.

“Technically, it may be traveling in some cases, but in some ways it takes a little bit of the athleticism out of the game in terms of beating guys one-on-one. Now, you are not going to break the habits of the rules your team grew up playing with in a couple of weeks of practice. So there is going to be some things with that, timeouts, the lane, the twenty-four second shot clock and the physicality issues that we will have to adjust to.

“Those things will be a big advantage for our opponents, but we will try to prepare for that the best we can in the couple of weeks leading up to it.”