By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

When Milton Jennings and Devin Booker first came to Clemson four years ago, Oliver Purnell was the head coach, Demontez Stitt was the point guard, Tanner Smith was the second guard, Jerai Grant was the center and David Potter was the small forward.

There was also this guy named Trevor Booker, who averaged 15.2 points and 8.4 rebounds per game at the power forward spot. He went on to earn All-ACC honors. Another guy on that team was a reserved guard named Andre Young, who averaged 9.2 points per game coming off the bench.

“It’s funny. We laugh about it all the time because if you just look around (the basketball program) everybody is different,” Jennings said Monday. “There are a few of the same people around for the most part. Phil (Sikes) for one.

“Other than that, when you look around there is a new trainer, new strength coach and a whole different coaching staff and teammates.”

Jennings and Devin Booker are the last two players and coaches from that 2009-’10 team that won 21 games and was invited to play in the NCAA Tournament. After that season, Purnell and most of those on his staff darted for DePaul, where he still coaches today.

Trevor Booker graduated that year and went on to be a first-round draft pick of the Washington Wizards, where he still plays in the NBA. Potter also graduated on that team, while Stitt and Grant played out their eligibility in 2010-’11 and Smith and Young last year.

Now, it’s Jennings and Devin Booker’s turn, the last two from an era that saw Clemson basketball reach heights it never had seen before. The two will be honored prior to Tuesday night’s game against Boston College as part of Senior Night at Littlejohn Coliseum.

“It is certainly a big game for our two seniors because they are guys I have a lot of respect for,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “They stood with us during a time when it was hard. After your freshman year, it is a time when it is not easy to stay from a standpoint that you don’t really have your roots firmly planted in the place that you are. Then your coach leaves.

“I have a lot of respect for those guys for staying at Clemson, and I think they have both improved a great deal in the last three years and have grown up a lot.”

Since the 2004-’05 season, the basketball program appeared in seven postseason tournaments, four straight NCAA Tournaments, recorded five straight 20-plus seasons, advanced to the ACC Tournament Championship game in 2008 and won its first NCAA Tournament game in 14 years in 2011.

“It has been a real great experience,” Jennings said. “It helped me as a person be able to meet a whole bunch of new people, while getting to know them. It taught me to accept people quicker. We had pretty much an older team when I was a freshman and sophomore so we pretty much grew up together.”

On that team four years ago, Jennings and Booker were the two young players, learning the ropes, if you will, at the college level. They watched and experienced how the older guys like Trevor Booker, Potter, Grant and Stitt handled things and carried themselves.

Now they sit as the lone two seniors on a squad that has no juniors and is filled with freshman and sophomores.

“We are not an older team anymore, and it has been a process, but it has been fun,” Jennings said. “I hope I get to comeback like Tanner did and laugh with the guys and see how they are doing next year in their games and continue my career.”

Though he still has at least three games left in his Clemson career, Jennings is finishing his career on a high note as a player. In his career he has totaled three games in which he has scored at least 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, and he had two of those this season.

In the last five games he has 14 assists to just four turnovers in 172 minutes of action.

“I’m proud of Milt’s development,” Brownell said. “I think he was a guy that came here with unreasonable expectations and some people are probably disappointed in him in some ways, but he has played pretty well this year.

“There have been sometimes when maybe he has not shot the ball as well as we would have liked and that’s been the only disappointing part of his game in where he maybe could have played a little bit better in terms of shooting. He is better shooter than he showed. But, he has done some good things in terms of rebounding and improving his assist-to-turnover number.

“He plays the game pretty smart,” Brownell continued. “He approaches things the right way, he knows game plans and he is on queue with what we are trying to do.”

Jennings said his career was about average as a college basketball player, but he has been pleased with the way he has progressed throughout his career, increasing his scoring and rebounding average in each season, while decreasing his assist-to-turnover ratio.

“Most people will say that ‘He didn’t live up to what he was supposed to be’ or ‘We see glimpses of it here and there.’ It’s because I second guess myself most times and I think too much,” he said. “I think I had a very average career, though it was still a very good one.”

The Charleston, SC native has got better on the defensive end, too. And though he was a McDonald’s All-American coming into Clemson and expectations for him were high, he learned it wasn’t about what others thought of him, but how he felt as a player and how hard he worked at trying to become a better basketball player for Clemson.

Jennings advice to current or future McDonald’s All-Americans coming to Clemson or anywhere else is, “You just have to play.”

“I’m the biggest thinker,” he said. “I think all the time. I laugh with Coach all the time because he will catch me on the sideline drifting off and staring up at the ceiling and thinking. I’m always thinking about game-time stuff like what this play will do, what that guard can do and what we are going to do.

“If another five-star player comes here or anywhere else, my advice to them would be to just play, and accept the coaching. That will make it much easier.”