CLEMSON — It has been an unorthodox offseason for Clemson basketball.

Both the men’s and women’s teams are living in a makeshift office space for the time being, while Littlejohn Coliseum and the adjacent Swann Pavilion get a $40 million facelift which will enhance the program’s offices, players’ lounge and meeting rooms, as well as each program’s own practice gym.

The two will also share the 30,000-square-foot facility’s bistro, press room, elite recovery center and its sports medicine suite. The enhancements are scheduled to be completed by October or November of this year.

In the meantime, both programs must make the best of things. The men’s program is holding up shop in the 1934 office space in the IPTAY Building, while the women’s program is housed at Memorial Stadium, where Dabo Swinney and the football program host recruits on game days during the football season.  

“We can’t wait to get back into an office. It is a little unorthodox in today’s time. We have no locker room, no office, so it feels like COVID all over again,” women’s head coach Shawn Poppie said jokingly.

It is even more unorthodox for Brad Brownell and the men’s program. Not only is the men’s program working with no offices or workout spaces for the players, like the women’s program, but there are a lot of new faces that are trying to get used to working with each other.

With the retirement of assistant coach Dick Bender, as well as associate head coach Billy Donlon taking a head coaching gig, Brownell lost long time coaches and friends, which he admitted he was prepared for.

However, another assistant coach in Sean Dixon left for Louisville, while special assistant to the head coach Jeff Reynolds retired from coaching. Then general manager Lucas McKay, who, like Bender, had been with Brownell since his days at UNC Wilmington more than two decades ago, left to be the new general manager at Oklahoma.

“It is probably a challenge more so because we do not have older players that are Clemson guys,” Brownell said. “And so, you do not have the staff that has been with me for ten years or even three or four years, like some of the guys, so they are kind of learning too.

“So, I am having to teach the new staff some of things that we do. Obviously, the same with the players. You don’t have quite as much help as other years because you do not have players that can help do some of that.”

Chris Harriman, Chris Hollender, Andre Morgan and Chad Warner have filled in as Brownell’s new assistant coaches, while Tyler Murray has replaced McKay as the team’s general manager.

The Tigers have also brought in seven new players, including transfers Liutauras Lelevicius, Dylan Faulkner, David Fuchs and Cole Certa, which has added to the offseason challenges.

“Zac [Foster] and Ace [Buckner] being out, that is challenging. Carter Welling being out, challenging. Most of our new guys are almost as experienced as the guys we have returning. So, it is a little bit that way, but we are probably moving a little bit slower than I would have liked. It is just what it is,” Brownell said. “The one positive, and I talked about it, is new people bring new energy. They are excited. They want to do well. They are eager. There is tremendous enthusiasm both from staff and players in the program.”

In other words, there is a lot of high energy on the coaching staff and in the locker room, which brings great juice to practice and great energy to the office.

“We (coaches) are all in the 1934 room at the top of IPTAY and it is just one big conference room and we are all together,” Brownell said. “I have an office, but everybody else is together, so it has been really good for those guys to get to know each other. They have all been spending time there together.

“Most have been waiting for their families to get here. They are all trying to find houses and do all of that, so they ate a bunch of meals together and now they are sort of getting settled as their families are starting to finish up schools wherever they have been, buy new houses and kind of become Clemson residents, if you will. So, it is getting a little more normal for them but for a couple of months they were having a little more fun up there.”

And that has been good for a Clemson program that has gone through an unorthodox offseason to this point.

–photo by Ken Ruinard / USA TODAY Network