Clemson’s men’s basketball team found out Sunday night whether or not its season will continue.
After missing out on the NCAA Tournament, the Tigers won’t play in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) or the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), officially bringing Clemson’s season to an end.
It will be the first year since 2017 that Clemson won’t be part of college basketball’s postseason (the 2020 postseason was canceled in response to the coronavirus pandemic). The Tigers finished this season 17-16 overall and 8-12 in ACC play to finish 10th in the league standings during the regular season.
Before a buzzer-beating loss to eventual champion Virginia Tech in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament last week, Clemson had won five games in a row, including a win over Tech, to avoid a losing season and stoke hope that the Tigers might be able to sneak into some sort of postseason tournament.
But it didn’t happen as inconsistency and attrition proved to be too much for Clemson to overcome in Brad Brownell’s 12th season at the helm. The Tigers lost out on chances for quality wins against St. Bonaventure, Rutgers and Miami in November and December and also lost at home to Boston College and at Georgia Tech, teams that finished in the bottom third of the ACC standings.
Senior forward Hunter Tyson went down with a broken clavicle in early February, and Clemson lost its next six games to fall to a season-worst three games under .500. Tyson’s frontcourt mate and leading scorer PJ Hall then aggravated his left foot injury in the final loss during that stretch at Louisville and missed the next three games.
Yet Clemson won each of those games without its sophomore big to start its late-season winning streak. The Tigers then knocked off North Carolina State in the opening round of the ACC Tournament, but it was too little, too late once Tech stunned Clemson with its walk-off win Wednesday.
Clemson finished the season at No. 84 in the NET rankings and had a combined 4-12 record in Quadrant 1 and 2 games. The Tigers’ lone Quad 1 victory didn’t come until March 5 when they beat Tech in both teams’ regular-season finale.
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