CHARLOTTE – The Clemson Women’s basketball team brought two representatives –- and almost a decade of combined collegiate basketball experience –- to the ACC Tipoff at the Charlotte Hilton Uptown on Tuesday.

Those representatives, senior guard Mia Moore, now in her second year with the Tigers, and graduate power forward Demeara Hinds, in her first season at Clemson, have played a collective nine years of college basketball. While both players started their careers at different Power Four programs, Moore had a relationship with Clemson head coach Shawn Poppie for seven years before she arrived on campus.

“Coach Poppie, he’s been recruiting me since high school, probably like ninth grade,” Moore, an Alpharetta, Ga., native said. “He’s been a great coach for me. He loves to develop his players. So, we spent countless hours in the gym trying to figure out what I can do to knock those threes down and then it finally triggered for me.”

Along with reworking Moore’s jump shot, Poppie has also transformed his roster ahead of his second season at the helm, bringing in six transfers and three freshmen recruits. His team enters the year with a combined 27 years of collegiate experience across 12 universities, including Clemson. 

For Hinds –- a Wake Forest transfer who recorded a career-high four blocks against Clemson in 2023, a focus this season is mixing her previous experience into the melting pot of the Tigers team.

“There’s a lot of young individuals on the team, so just kind of leading by example and showing them these are the ways to win, and these are the ways that you need to be successful in the end,” Hinds said. “It takes a lot more than just coming to practice or going to weights, there’s a lot of extra stuff that goes into it like rehab and making sure that you’re taking care of your bodies.”

This mentorship, as well as bonding events at Poppie’s house, have helped the squad grow together on and off the court.

One of those bonding moments took place on Lake Hartwell, where Hinds caught her first fish among her teammates just months after moving to Clemson.

“I was so bad, but I caught one, and I got a picture with it,” she said with a laugh.

While Hinds caught a fish just below the surface of Clemson’s on-campus lake, Poppie believes his team can catch something deeper, a camaraderie that will translate to the court.

“Ultimately, when a shot goes up, we’re all celebrating because it doesn’t matter that Mia makes a shot or D (Hinds) makes a good post move, we celebrate one another,” he said. “That’s kind of the culture we’re trying to establish. It’s not only in the locker room. It’s our style of play… Hopefully our culture is our style, and vice versa.

“To me that’s the purest form of basketball. It’s a lot of fun to watch, but I also think that our fan base feels that. That’s why the growth that we’ve had in just a short time of the Clemson family really hopping on the young women we got in the locker room.”

That style emphasizes ball movement, running the floor, and working inside-out and feeding post players the ball and kicking out to guards like Moore for three-pointers. 

Last week, Poppie posted a video to his social media accounts of a play in practice where this offense was displayed clearly as all five players touched the ball, and Hinds finished with a basket in the post.

“You don’t really see many teams that all five players can touch the ball, It’s usually two or three that are doing all the handling,” Moore said of the video. “It’s just really exciting that we’re able to do that because it’s going to  translate…I feel like it’s going to be really hard for the teams to guard us this year because everybody can do something with the ball.”

Moore’s ability with the ball comes, in part, from her three-point proficiency. Last season, she knocked down 42 shots from beyond-the-arc with 42 percent accuracy. This sharpshooting helped Clemson to a program-high 228 three-pointers made, two wins over ranked opponents, and an ACC Tournament win.

Still, close losses and struggles to finish against tenured teams resulted in a 14-17 final record for the Tigers.

According to Poppie, the next step for his program to improve their record comes from efficient offense, post production, and finishing close games.

“We were very competitive a year ago, but still, at the end of the day we were 14-17, and that’s not what our goals or expectations are at Clemson,” he said. “I know it’s year one, but I’m not very patient. I think for us, it was to really focus. One, on ourselves as coaches and how do we get over the hump, because the reality is we’re only five possessions away from having a totally different year.

“I think we have a group in that locker room that truly believes we can take the next step and compete to get ourselves in an NCAA Tournament, which has not happened in a long, long time.”

To be exact, the Tigers’ last NCAA Tournament appearance was in the 2018-2019 season and before that, it was in 2001 under coach Jim Davis. Despite the program’s hiatus, Moore and Hinds are set on getting Clemson back into March Madness.

“(Our) goal is to  get to the ACC tournament, go to the NCAA tournament, like just make a run and make the Clemson community happy,” Moore said.

That Clemson community, which doubled its women’s basketball attendance last year, can glimpse the new Tigers team for the first time on Monday, Nov. 3, when the Tigers host USC Upstate at Littlejohn Coliseum at 11 a.m.

–photo by Ken Ruinard / Imagn Images