Some thoughts while wondering which Clemson basketball players didn't put the "Do not disturb" thingies on their door handles this morning at the team hotel in Tampa:
-- Listening to Mike Davis speak after last night's game this morning, I was struck by the revelation that his team didn't belong in the NCAA Tournament not because of their resume, but because of their alarmingly fragile psyches.
Davis didn't explicitly blame TV pundits for his team's awful showing against Clemson, but he seemed to suggest that criticism of UAB's inclusion played a role.
"That hurt our guys a lot," Davis said. "I can't tell you the magnitude of the heartbreak involved with the kids having to hear people say that we didn't belong."
Quick refresher: On Sunday, when the Blazers were included among the at-large entrants, a lot of folks were surprised because some other teams seemed more deserving. A few talking heads, including Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale, ripped the NCAA Selection Committee for selecting UAB. This Birmingham columnist basically dialed up the waaaambulance, calling Bilas and Co. "ESPN's disgraceful brigade of haters."
I don't think I'll ever be confused as a shill for ESPN -- cough, MIKE PATRICK, cough, cough -- but these dudes are paid to give their opinions. If their completely legitimate misgivings about the selection process inflict genuine heartbreak and depression on a group of players, then maybe UAB needs to go down a few classifications ... like, say, to church league.
Before the game, we were supposed to believe the Blazers had a chip on their shoulders. After the game, they're looking for a shoulder to cry on because a few analysts that they didn't belong ... two days before UAB made an irrefutable case that it didn't belong.
Lame.
-- By the way, the same Birmingham columnist writes today that last night's awful showing by the Blazers doesn't justify the belief that they shouldn't have been in the tournament.
I promise you, he actually typed the following words:
Did Mike Krzyzewski and Duke owe anyone an apology when the Blue Devils lost the 1990 national championship game to UNLV by 30? No. Of course not. And neither do Davis and the Blazers.
There's just a slight difference between UAB making the "First Four" this year and Duke making the Final Two in 1990. But maybe we're splitting hairs.
-- It was amusing to hear Clark Kellogg talking about how playing West Virginia on such short rest wasn't that big a deal for Clemson. The way he was spinning it, the Tigers actually have an advantage by playing late Tuesday night, flying almost 1,000 miles to Tampa in the wee hours, practicing today, then playing a rested West Virginia team 36 hours after walking off the floor in Dayton.
That's the brilliant stuff you come to expect from CBS' A Team. What's Kellogg going to tell us next, that he and Jim Nantz worked last night's games because they were compelling national matchups?
-- Brad Brownell has complained multiple times recently that his program doesn't get enough pub from media outside of Clemson.
He won't be able to grouse much longer, because the word is spreading quickly about the job he's done in his first year.
Stewart Mandel gave the Tigers some love in this column. And here's a piece from Yahoo's Jason King.
And heck, even Vitale has realized Ron Bradley is not the head coach at Clemson.
-- Speaking of Bradley, will he and his boss be moving again sometime soon?
The N.C. State student paper reported yesterday that Oliver Purnell expressed interest in the Wolfpack position, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that were accurate. Purnell shopped his name quite a bit when he was at Clemson, and more than most people realize.
I'm thinking the DePaul rebuilding job is much more daunting than Purnell realized. He's an ACC guy, and you have to think the N.C. State job has always intrigued him.
Apparently Purnell knows N.C. State AD Debbie Yow pretty well, so there's a connection there. But I'd be surprised if he were near the top of the list at this point.
How much is Purnell kicking himself for not waiting a year to bolt Clemson? Lotta good jobs out there right now.
-- The most underplayed aspect of Clemson's excellent defense this season is on-the-ball defense by the point guard.
The Tigers' defense is rooted in the halfcourt, but a major ingredient is the "jamming" of the opposing point guard as soon as he gets the ball after a made or missed shot. The full-court press is gone, but Demontez Stitt, Andre Young and Zavier Anderson are still playing 94 feet.
The intended effect of Purnell's press was to wear opponents down and make it a struggle for them to initiate their halfcourt offense. It's the same deal with Brownell's defense, minus all the easy baskets that came when opponents broke the press.
-- Some belated props are due to my father-in-law.
He has no ties to Clemson, but he adopted the Tigers as a favorite when I started covering them years ago. He wears all kinds of Clemson garb, and when he makes the trips down from Virginia his car always sports one of those Tiger paw window flags -- even in the dead of summer, when no sports are being played.
He used to coach high school basketball, and he has a pretty keen eye. When Terrence Oglesby was lighting it up as a freshman, he was skeptical. Said Oglesby took too many shots, was too selfish and couldn't play defense.
Earlier this season, when the Tigers had lost three straight December games and seemed destined for a major dip in Brownell's first season, he said this:
"This team isn't as bad as you think. They're going to surprise some people."
I rolled my eyes ... and came close to rolling on the floor with laughter.
The last laugh is his.
LW
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