By Will Vandervort.

One of the few bright spots in what turned out to be an average year for the Clemson basketball program was the improvement of power forward Jaron Blossomgame.

He improved last year’s numbers from 4.9 points to 13.1 points per game. Blossomgame’s plus-8.2 jump was Clemson’s biggest in a single-season in 15 years.

“Those are pretty good numbers in the ACC,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “It will be hard for him to make a big jump and follow that, but he will certainly work hard at it.”

The redshirt sophomore led the Tigers in both scoring and rebounding this season, the first freshman or sophomore to do that since a guy named Greg Buckner was roaming the court at Littlejohn Coliseum in 1995.

“I’m happy that he has been rewarded for all his hard work with a really good season. I thought he had a very productive sophomore year,” Brownell said Tuesday during his end of the year press conference. “Certainly, I’m excited to have him two more years and he will be a big part of the centerpiece of what we try to do offensively.”

It’s an understatement for Brownell to say he is glad to have Blossomgame return for another season. This will mark the first time in his five-plus years at Clemson that his leading scorer will return. In his first three years the Tigers leading scorers were seniors (Demontez Stitt, Andre Young and Devin Booker), while last year junior K.J. McDaniels led the team in scoring but he gave up his senior year so he could play in the NBA.

“That has been one of the challenges since we have been here is losing our leading scorer every year and kind of having to retool our offense and what we are going to do. It kind of gives you another thing to worry about really as a coach,” Brownell said.

But there will be no worrying in that regard this off-season. Blossomgame will return with his 13.1 points and 8 rebounds per game average, giving Brownell for the first time in an off-season the opportunity to orchestrate an offense around one player.

“It is strange that it has taken this long,” Brownell said. “That’s just the way it is. In some years you are going to have older players that are going to lead you in scoring. Certainly K.J.’s absences is one of the things that hurt us this year.”

McDaniels, who was drafted by Philadelphia at No. 32 overall last summer, averaged 17 points and nearly 10 rebounds a game for the Tigers in 2014. His absence, especially his athletic ability on both sides of the floor, was noticeable in losses to teams like Winthrop, Gardner-Webb and Rutgers, as well as in ACC games against NC State, Florida State, Miami and Georgia Tech.

Those seven games were possibly six wins with McDaniels on the floor in a Clemson uniform as well as seven victories that could have been added to the 16 wins they got without him in the lineup. Those seven games are the difference between dancing and watching the NCAA Tournament on the sofa.

But Blossomgame did his best to try and get the Tigers there and that’s what has Brownell encouraged about the future. There are still plenty of questions to be answered.

Can transfer Avery Holmes truly be the answer the Tigers need at the point guard position? Can center Landry Nnoko learn to keep himself on the floor and will freshman Donte Grantham add to what was a good first year?

Those are all good questions. But at least Brownell gets the opportunity to answer them with his leading scorer and rebounder for a change.

“I’m really proud of Jaron. He probably had an even better year than I thought,” Brownell said. “I thought he would make a nice jump. I knew this was his first spring and summer with us last year. I knew he was highly motivated and healthy for the first time.”