Q&A with Clemson’s Brad Brownell: Wrapping up 2019-20, PJ Hall’s future and more
Clemson basketball coach Brad Brownell talked with The State this week about a variety of topics to wrap up the 2019-20 season.
Brownell discussed the sudden end to this past season after the coronavirus outbreak, the future of his program, his excitement for next year, what fans can expect from incoming recruit P.J. Hall and more.
The Tigers finished the 2019-20 season with a 16-15 record. Clemson returns four starters off of this year’s team and should be improved next year.
Here’s the transcript from the conversation:
What was last Thursday like for you as a coach trying to navigate everything with the ACC tournament and then the basketball season being canceled?
It was certainly unique for sure. We come off the win against Miami and feel like we played pretty well. Everybody’s excited. Then you flip on the TV (Thursday morning) and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute now.’ All of a sudden the NBA’s not playing, (Rudy) Gobert’s contracted the coronavirus. They don’t know about other players. Basically I’m getting ready for the game, getting ready to shower and get dressed and all of that. For an hour I had the TV on and I was a little bit like, ‘This is nuts. It seems like this has drastically changed.’
The more I started listening and hearing things, my wife was in the room with me, and I was like, ‘I’m a little surprised we’re playing.’ ... I met with our guys at 10:30. I met with Aamir (Simms) and Clyde (Trapp) and pulled them aside and said, ‘Do you guys wanna play? They said, ‘I think we’re all good. We want to play.’ Which is what I figured, young guys are going to want to play. But I felt like I needed to at least talk to them.
So then we get to the arena and everything’s about the same. Guys start getting ready. I put some notes on the board. ... Then guys start to go out to the gym and shoot a little bit. I brought the guys back in and talked to them. We went through our personnel, then I start going through keys to the game, giving a little speech and all of that. (AD) Dan (Radakovich) came in and tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, I don’t think it’s going to happen.’ I went to a quick meeting with Dan and (Clemson Deputy AD) Graham (Neff) and (FSU coach) Leonard (Hamilton) and Florida State administration and (ACC) commissioner (John) Swofford and that’s when they told us, ‘Hey, it looks like we’re not going to do this. Hate that it came to this and hate that it came to this time, but this is the direction the league’s going. And that’s it.’
We just tried to do what was right by going in and talking to our guys, then obviously it wasn’t easy, but I told our guys we needed to go out there and support Florida State. They’re going to be given the ACC championship, having won the regular season. And it’s the right thing to do. It was hard. It wasn’t easy. Initially our guys were a little bit angry because they want to play. They’re excited and felt like we could win and have a good weekend coming off a good win. And then obviously it’s the end of a couple of guys careers, so that’s hard too. There’s a finality that starts to hit you a little bit that’s challenging.
You didn’t know at that point that the NCAA tournament and NIT would be canceled as well, right? Were you holding out hope those might take place?
Our players and nobody really knew for sure, but I didn’t think there was any way possible. I told Graham that morning I was surprised we’re going to play. Once you started hearing the NBA canceled and one of their players got it, then you start to be concerned, like ‘We can’t have one our players get that.’ I was concerned that we would play and maybe Duke and N.C. State would play. Then that night they’d change their minds and the games would get canceled. I didn’t think that was right, so I’m glad they did it before the games started that day if they were gonna do it.
Obviously it was the right thing to do, right decision, certainly. But it didn’t make it easier. It was probably harder because we had on our uniforms ready to go. Guys were ready to play. We’re 15 minutes from tipoff. Just had to do what was right.
Have you talked with the team as a whole to wrap up the season or is that something that will happen later?
You know what’s kind of interesting is that for the first time since I’ve been at Clemson we actually had our banquet on Saturday after the Georgia Tech game (to end the regular season). So we kind of already closed our year out together that way. We had a quick meeting in the locker room when we got back from the ACC tournament, but guys are off on spring break and who knows when they’re coming back.
We’ve spent this week just trying to maintain contact with our players, make sure they know what they’re doing for next week. We’ve got e-learning starting up. Are they prepared for it and know what they need to do? A couple of guys came back (Wednesday and Thursday) to grab a couple of things out of the dorm. But really, to be honest with you, it’s not like there’s been another meeting where we sit down and discuss all of that. Obviously if it had been normal times we’d probably have a meeting at the end of the week to kind of say, ‘All right, let’s get our spring thoughts. Here’s what we’ve gotta do to get better’ and have individual meetings. But we haven’t been able to do that.
Did you talk with Dan at all to wrap up the season?
No, we haven’t had an end of the year meeting. I know something came out on a ticker from some national reporter. ... Dan said, ‘Hey coach, there was never a thought on our part that you weren’t coming back this year.’ I don’t know where that came from or why some guy would make that into a story or a headline. So no, there was no meeting with Dan like, ‘Hey, you know you’re coming back?’ or anything like that. We’ll have that meeting at some point, but obviously right now there’s way too much going on for that to happen.
Obviously it was an up-and-down season with plenty of highs. How do you try to build off of the three top 6 wins, the win at UNC, etc.?
It was a unique year, certainly. Just managing all the injuries and changes in roster and seven new players. It was a lot. But I”m really proud of our group. I thought our guys really hung in there. I thought we got better. I thought we had a few games that were extreme highs. Obviously the win at North Carolina, these guys will always be the team that ended the streak. That was a huge deal. It seemed to be a huge deal for most people. I told people if I had a nickel for every person who said, ‘Hey coach, if you can beat Chapel Hill, we’ve never done that. That’s quite an accomplishment. They might build a statue for you.’ That was a big thing. My point to that is these are the guys that did it.
And then obviously we had the three great wins against top six teams. Two games, the Syracuse game and Florida State game where you win with one or two seconds left on the clock.You can go years without that happening. So the challenge is to find consistency and to be consistently good. And it’s hard.
I think expectations of our team kind of changed throughout the season. Obviously they rose to the highest level of making the NCAA tournament there for a little while. Unfortunately we weren’t quite able to hold on and play well enough to make that happen.
With such a young team coming back how excited are you about the future?
Yeah, real excited. Super excited about the future of our program. I think ever since we got the new facility our recruiting has continued to go to another level. I think we’re bringing in more young players that have a chance to be bigger contributors. Certainly I think this year’s freshman class, I hate Chase (Hunter) didn’t get to play more because I think he’s a good player. But I though (Al-Amir Dawes) and Alex (Hemenway) really got better. That was good to see. I think our sophomores improved. That was good to see. And I’m excited about our freshmen coming in. I think our program continues to take steps forward to where now our expectations keep rising. That’s a good thing. Now we’ve got to continue to take steps forward, and I think we’re doing it.
How important was signing P.J. Hall and what kind of impact can he have not only next year but throughout his career?
Well, No. 1, to get the top player in the state of South Carolina was a big thing. We tried the last two or three years on some guys like that and fell a little bit short. Thankful that we were able to get a guy like that to come play here. We think he’s really talented and a winner and comes from a great family. We’re excited that he wanted to come to Clemson. That means a lot.
I think he’s seen that our program has taken steps forward and he wants to be a guy to help us take one more step. He’s gonna have a lot to learn, like young players do, but he’s starting from a very good position. I mean he’s a big, strong kid who just keeps getting better and better. He comes from a well-coached program where he’s been winning. Obviously I think it’s a big sign because it shows players in our state that, ‘Hey, you can be the best player in South Carolina and going to Clemson’s a good thing.’
How are you recruiting right now with the restrictions that are going on with the coronavirus?
Just by the phone. I think it’s going well. We’re basically done for next year, so we’re kind of recruiting young players, ‘21 and ‘22s. We feel like we’re doing a good job with some guys. We’ve just gotta hang in there. It’s a unique time because normally we’d be able to go out and do some stuff right now, but nobody can so we’re gonna all have to readjust. Who knows how long this is gonna last and what it’s gonna do. I’m sure it’s gonna change AAU and April recruiting. How does it affect other kids and how does it affect our recruiting through the summer? All of that is still up in the air. It’s kind of a challenging time right now. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the college recruiting game right now.
Do you expect to pursue any grad transfers this year?
Eh, I don’t know. I’m not gonna say never, but like, that’s not really what we plan on doing right this second. But I never say never. We’ll see what happens here through the next few weeks with our team and see how we feel about what we’ve got coming back. But right now we feel pretty good.
I know you had some guys banged up this year. Injury wise how are they progressing?
Jonathan Baehre is just normal rehab off an ACL. It’s going to be a while. But he’s progressing nicely. We’ve just gotta wait and see. It’s going to be November or something like that before he’s ready to really do much. We’ve just gotta be really patient with him. And then Chase Hunter’s got a stress fracture, so we’ve gotta be patient with him. He’s a guy that we think is a good player and he tried to play some this year, and he couldn’t get it to be consistently healthy. So we ended up having to shut him down unfortunately. Now we’ve gotta get him off his feet and let him try to get healthy so we can work with him on some things here in the summer. But right now for the rest of this month and April and probably even most of May he’s going to be out.
What have you been doing this past week with no basketball and no sports going on?
Probably driving my wife a little crazy. I’ve assigned some projects to my staff where we’re looking at all of our offensive possessions, all of our defensive possessions, all of our baseline out of bounds possessions, all of our press offense possessions, all of those things. And trying to look at what worked. We’re gonna chart it. We’re gonna analyze it. We’re gonna see how we can get better, do a deep dive into our own team and what we thought are some things that needed to improve.
We’re going to look at some other teams and things that they do and see if there’s something that we see someone else doing that we like that we can maybe modify or use something that they’re doing to help us. And then obviously we’re still recruiting and taking care of our players. So we’re still talking to our guys on our team twice a week, talking to recruits. There’s still work to be done and work you can do. You’re just doing it from home.
It’s a little more challenging because you’ve gotta make a few more phone calls. You can’t have as much face-to-face with your staff as you would like. But I think we’re organized well and we’ve got a plan on what we want to do. We’re trying to do that. I’m trying to do a few things around the house for the missus. Still trying to work out a little bit. Just keep busy.
This story was originally published March 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
