MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A few weeks back, Clemson head coach Brad Brownell was very critical of the Big 12 Conference.

He basically said some teams in the conference were manipulating the NET Rankings to bolster their rankings. Brownell made those comments on Feb. 28, and he probably was not thinking he could possibly meet a Big 12 team in the NCAA Tournament when he said it.

Well, it happened.

The sixth seeded Tigers will play No. 3 Baylor in the second round of the West Regional on Sunday (6:10 p.m., TNT).

“It was in no disrespect to the league, but I do think they figured some things out,” Brownell said Saturday from the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tenn. “It’s probably more of a compliment than anything. I think there are a lot of teams in their league that scheduled in a way that help their NET. And there’s different ways to do it.”

When Brownell made his original comment, he did not say Baylor was one of those teams, but he did mention Cincinnati and Iowa State.

“You can schedule really hard games and hopefully try and win those games. Or it seems you can schedule some teams that aren’t maybe as good and beat them by a lot and pad your offensive and defensive efficiency numbers,” Brownell said. “I wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t been already put out there, not only by people and other coaches in our league, but some media people had figured it out.”

Again, Brownell did not hold back on his opinion, especially after the Tigers were left out of last year’s tournament despite winning 23 games, including 14 in the ACC.

To make sure that did not happen again, Brownell loaded up the non-conference schedule in 2023-’24, as Clemson played teams like UAB, Alabama, TCU, South Carolina, Memphis and Boise State.

That was the exact opposite of what teams in the Big 12 were doing.

“I do think that’s a problem. I think that’s a problem with the system,” Brownell said. “And we really need to look at it. This tournament is too important to too many people.

“And, again, I have all the respect in the world for the (selection) committee. Our heart was broken last year being left out. One of the things we were penalized for, I think, was maybe our non-conference strength of schedule. Now, that’s hard too because last year, at that time, I was arguing that your non-conference strength of schedule shouldn’t matter as much as just your overall strength of schedule. Whatever your overall strength of schedule is that’s what it is.”

Clemson’s strength if schedule this season was ranked No. 33.

“If you play in a really hard league, like the Big 12 or the ACC, you may not want to schedule over your head in November and December,” Brownell said. “The season’s hard enough. But I do think that there are some things happening with the numbers that are changing whether teams become Quad 2s and Quad 3s.

“And I get it, behind closed doors maybe they don’t view the Quad 2, Quad 3 as much as everybody else on the outside does. But starting in December, January and February, that’s all anybody in media talks about. That was a bad loss because it’s Quad 3. That was a good win because it’s Quad 2.”

Brownell pointed out that teams are getting ripped for playing conference games against team that were Quad 3 and Quad 4.

“Everybody is killing you about your bad losses, and a team who — we had a stretch there where we had five ACC teams that were Quad 3, and they were all between, like, 75 and 95,” Brownell said. “So we have five teams and we have five home games that were all — I think we were 4-1 — NC State at the time beat us and they were a Quad 3.

“For a long time NC State was a Quad 3. Right now they have a chance to be in the Sweet 16. So I’m not sure that all the numbers are adding up. And obviously I made that clear and that comment with that interview.”

–photo by Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports

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