By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
For the last six weeks, Clemson head coach Brad Brownell has felt that his performance as a basketball coach has been unacceptable.
There was no excuse, he says, in his team losing seven straight games to close the season. There was no excuse for them ranking last in the ACC in scoring, while ranking 11th in field goal percentage and free throw percentage.
The 13-18 overall record marked his first losing season as a head coach, and he is not happy about it.
The Tigers, whose season ended last week in the first round of the ACC Tournament, had just one victory since Jan. 29. All numbers that caused and still cause him heartburn every day.
Brownell understands it is his job to figure out how to fix everything, but he can’t do it alone.
“I have felt this way for six weeks now and the problem is, I’m the guy that has felt this way the most,” Brownell said Wednesday. “My players need to start feeling that way and they are going to hear that when we come back from spring break.”
Earlier this year, Brownell called out his team following their loss to Florida State at home. He said he did not have enough leaders in the locker room and that a team that is lead through coaching and not players usually does not have success.
“When a team is coach-directed, it is never as good as if the team is player-directed,” the Clemson coach said. “I told you right here we were coach-directed and that was at least with a month to go in the season and it never got turned around.
“Again, there is clear evidence with what happened with that. Who is going to be the leaders? Natural guys, maybe K.J. (McDaniels)? Maybe it’s Rod Hall? Those are two guys that have played a lot and have experience. You will expect them to play next year so they will have voices.
“I don’t know if a Jordan Roper is ready to do that. Maybe? Maybe not. The players have to figure that out.”
Brownell says his plan is to challenge every guy on the roster to take a good long look in the mirror and ask themselves if they truly believe they did everything they could this season.
“All you have to do is look at their stats and you can poke holes in all of them,” he said. “The fact there was only five charges taken, the fact that we did not finish off some games better, those are problematic.
“I’m not a guy that talks about excuses and about being young or this guy got hurt or that guy got hurt. We were good enough when we had all these guys to be 4-4 (in the ACC) and playing well enough to beat a lot of people and some good people.
“We should have been able to figure out ways to do better finishing up. We just did not do it. Everybody in our program needs to look in the mirror. The head coach needs to, but the players do as well and the staff. We better figure out a way to start changing it.”