CLEMSON – Last season marked many firsts for Clemson women’s basketball and head coach Shawn Poppie.

The Tigers won 21 games, their most in 25 years, including 11 ACC wins for the first time in the 21st century. Additionally, they upset No. 9 Duke and No. 21 North Carolina, putting the ACC-hoops world on notice. 

To cap off the success, Poppie’s team made an NCAA Tournament appearance, the program’s first since 2019, ultimately losing in overtime to nine-seed Southern California in the first round, after Mia Moore’s last-second buzzer-beater was ruled late at the end of regulation.

However, Clemson is not content to stop after its best season since the 1990s. In year three as the Tigers’ leader, Poppie believes that Clemson is on pace for more exponential growth in the upcoming 2026-27 season.

“With this group there’s not really a limit, right?” Poppie said at the ACC Tipoff event in Charlotte. “The ceiling, I think last year we kind of hit it, like we got as far as we could get with the group we had minus point-three seconds and maybe a second round berth. But this group is as good as they want to be.”

While veterans Taylor Johnson-Matthews and Mia Moore have been around the team pending lawsuits for another year of eligibility, their futures are still not set in stone, according to Poppie. This means that as of now, senior guard Rusne Augustinaite will be the lone returning starter from last year’s team on the current roster. 

Augustinaite, who knocked down 80 three-pointers on 42 percent shooting one year ago, will certainly be poised to take on a big role this season, but Poppie believes the incoming transfers and freshmen players that his staff brought in will put the reason his Tigers are right in the thick of ACC competition.

This offseason, Clemson brought in three transfer forwards in Yakiya Milton, Jenna Lawrence and Edie Clarke, who are all listed between 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-5 in height. Freshman forwards Julia Scott and Kimora Fields also stand above the six-foot mark and were both considered Top-45 recruits in their high school class by ESPN.

Their size will be a welcome addition, especially throughout the Tigers’ conference schedule.

“We had been undersized the first two years,” Poppie said. “We had been at Clemson and to go and ge, Kai Milton, six-five with a 6-foot-7 wingspan, and Edie Clark, and we obviously had already signed Julia Scott in the freshman class, Jenna Lawrence 6’2 and can shoot it. Like we just finally got the length that everyone else looks like.”

For reference, the average height on the Tigers’ team last season was 5-foot-10. This year, with the addition of those taller players, the median is now nearly 6-foot-1, slightly taller than the average of Duke’s ACC-Tournament-winning squad last season.

However, even in basketball, height is not everything, and that might be most clearly evidenced by the addition of Mackenzie Nelson. Nelson, last season’s ACC leader in assists, transferred from Virginia Tech, largely due to Poppie’s vision for his team. 

With track star speed and elite ball-handling skills, the 5-foot-8 point guard will give the Tigers’ backcourt an immediate boost. Not to mention, she has three years of ACC experience under her belt.

“I think like coach Poppie said, I bring a level of pace that Clemson was missing last year,” Nelson said at the Tipoff event. “I think I’m still figuring out how to go fast without going too fast. But I think just being that leader on the court, I think being an extension of your head coach is super important. I’m a natural-born leader and I’m looking to bring that.”

The Tigers added guards Taliyah Henderson, a North Carolina transfer who was formerly a McDonald’s All-American in high school, as well as freshman Meeyah Green, another Top-60 recruit.

Now, the question becomes, with all of the height that Clemson added this season, as well as the influx of new guards, what will the Tigers’ offense look like in 2026?

Will they continue to rely on their three-point-heavy scheme or will they become more post-player oriented?

According to Poppie, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

“I think that it’ll be a unique year because I think that for the first time since being at Clemson, we have a threat to score inside by more than just one player,” Poppie said. “I think between our post play, we got some big physical guards that can get down there while we stretch you out, it’s going to be a lot harder to make that decision. 

“I think that the game can be even easier for some of our shooters because of that threat, and/or we can get more free throws,” he added. “So that’s the one thing that yeah, we shot a lot of threes, but man, we got to get to the line a little bit more by playing a little bit more physical inside. And so I think it’ll be more balanced.”

Clemson fans can get their first look at that balanced attack on Monday, Nov. 2, when the Tigers will open their season against Radford at Littlejohn Coliseum.