CLEMSON – The NCAA tournament bracket is decided by a committee under a very long criteria. One of the biggest players in deciding who makes the tournament is the NET rankings. It’s a metric that splits games into quadrants based on the quality of opponents and a team’s ranking is weighed heavily by the quadrants it loses to.

With that in mind, the Clemson Tigers ended last season on the bubble but many considered Brad Brownell’s team deserved to make it. Selection Sunday came around and the Tigers never heard their name called. Brownell has always been a clear critic of the NET rankings, which Clemson finished No. 67 in.

At 2023-24 ACC Tipoff, the sentiment is still the same and he went at length about the NET. It starts with how teams are valued even if they improve late and are heavily weighed down as opponents because of bad starts to the season. For the Tigers, that was Louisville, which may be the reason Clemson didn’t go dancing.

“Louisville was much better in the last two months of the season than they were at the beginning of the season for a variety of reasons…wins and losses against those guys were certainly a lot harder to come by than what it was when they were in November and so that’s the part I have with the NET and some of this that I’m not sure is right,” Brownell said.

The Cardinals finished outside the top 300 in the NET, so it was easily a Quad-4 loss for Clemson, but that wasn’t the quality of team on the court. It’s something Brownell is very vocal and about and going out to win every game continues to be the goal, and let everything work out. That doesn’t mean there’s flaws in the system, and the Tigers coach gets a smirk on his face when he can talk about it.