Heavy mettle

There was an air of uncomfortable uncertainty about the rest of the season when we spent a day with Brad Brownell in mid-February.

Maybe it was solely attributed to the fact Clemson was coming off a narrow home loss to North Carolina, a defeat that Brownell was having a hard time flushing four days later.

But I tend to think it was more than that. As the team prepared to board the bus that would take it to the airport for a flight to Raleigh for the next day's game at N.C. State, an assistant told me the staff didn't know what to expect the next night -- or, for that matter, the rest of the season. The team seemed fragile emotionally, and there was a sense fortunes could go one way or another.

The Tigers went out and lost to the Wolfpack to fall to 17-9 and 6-6 in the ACC. Their next game was at Miami. There wasn't a lot of optimism that they'd turn things around, and certainly no one was talking NCAA Tournament.

They went down to South Florida and gutted out a win at Miami, and the belief here is that the victory is underrated as a key part of this team's development into what we've seen recently.

We've talked about the meeting Brownell had with seniors Demontez Stitt and Jerai Grant his first night on the job. We've talked about the grueling preseason conditioning regimen that was instrumental in team-building. We've talked about what happened after the three-game losing streak in December, this team buying in to a total emphasis on defense.

Those were all formative times. But the win at Miami has to rank right up there with all of them as we examine the ingredients of this season's success. Looking back, it seems as if this team grew up.

There are reasons Clemson could lose to West Virginia today, but I doubt fragility and lack of mental toughness would be on the list if you asked this staff. The Tigers proved their mettle by giving Duke all it could handle at Cameron, by showing more energy and inspiration than Virginia Tech, by outplaying North Carolina for most of regulation five days ago in Greensboro, and by throttling UAB two days ago in Dayton.

This team will need every bit of toughness and resilience it can summon against West Virginia's physical, bruising Big East team. And the preposterous 36-hour turnaround time that faces Clemson makes the task even more difficult.

But we can safely predict this team won't buckle and fall apart, even under circumstances that can reasonably be called unfair. We couldn't make that prediction a month ago.

On to some Thursday linkage...

-- Go ahead and put Shaka Smart's name into the "Hot young names" category after last night's play-in win over Southern Cal. Smart was already regarded as a promising young coach, and his name will be even sexier after this victory.

Gary Parrish says VCU likely will have to go shopping again after Smart is snapped up.

Congrats to Smart and his wife, Maya. Got to know them when they were at Clemson, and they're as impressive as people as Smart is as a coach. Also happy for VCU assistant Will Wade, a Clemson grad who was on Oliver Purnell's support staff for a number of years.

-- Smart had a great line last night as he sat down for the postgame presser:

“You guys think Jay Bilas watched that game?”

Here's a story on Smart in the Dayton paper.

-- Not exactly glowing reviews of the "First Four." Stewart Mandel says it was a flop, and this USA Today columnist calls it March Badness.

Here's a passage from Mandel:

After a promising start a night earlier, when UNC-Asheville rallied to beat Arkansas-Little Rock in overtime, the First Four deteriorated into what many expected: A series of forgettable games between largely irrelevant teams.

Eh, I don't know. My feelings on the "First Four" charade have already been documented, but I don't think it's all bad.

Look at it from Clemson's perspective: Tuesday's win allowed a lot of national pundits to take notice of what makes the Tigers good. A lot of folks are impressed with this team now, and that's the kind of recognition that's been lacking to this point.

-- The Tigers' lack of rest is the dominant story in Tampa. Steve Megargee of Rivals writes about it in this piece.

“We certainly wish maybe that we were playing a night game and just had a little more time in the morning to have a normal walk-through and a normal meeting,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “But we basically have to wake up and play.”

That was the closest anyone from Clemson came to complaining about the situation. As one of the last four teams in the 68-team field, the Tigers are grateful just to have made the tournament at all.

And the Tigers actually have gotten plenty of sleep, even if it wasn’t at night. After arriving in their Tampa hotel rooms at 4:30 a.m., the Tigers rested until close to noon.

“I feel like as players, we can’t let fatigue and things like that get to us,” senior guard Demontez Stitt said. “We’re just going to have to play through it. We’re going to have to impose our will on them from the beginning and not let the game go down to the wire.”

-- Here's a good column on Bob Huggins and his pursuit of a championship ring.

“When you think about some of the people that we’ve beaten and some of the players that we’ve played against, we’re not going to play against anybody better than Kemba Walker. To me, he’s the best player in the country. And we’re not going to play against guards that are better than Notre Dame’s Ben Hansbrough. We’re going to play against some probably that are as good, but we’re not going to play against anybody better.”

-- And Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated opines on Huggins' track suit.



LW