December fun for Brownell and Co.

It's probably safe to say June is the earliest in the year I've ever looked forward to anything involving December basketball.

Because of my duties covering football -- and because pre-January basketball is often quite dull -- it's usually tough to get excited about two months of pre-conference play.

That changes now with the addition of Arizona to Clemson's schedule over the next two seasons.

First, the news: Our information indicates the dates will be Saturday, Dec. 10 at Arizona this year, and Saturday, Dec. 8 at Littlejohn in 2012.

This will be a big week for Clemson basketball in both cases, because games against South Carolina (at Littlejohn this year, and in Columbia in 2012) will occur the previous Sunday.

Gotta give credit to Brad Brownell for having the urge to improve the Tigers' non-conference schedule. He and Miller had a relationship from the days they were coaching 50 miles from each other at Wright State and Xavier, respectively, so this arrangement worked smoothly.

And who knows -- maybe their relationship goes back further than that, back to when Brownell was at UNC Wilmington and Miller was an assistant under Herb Sendek at N.C. State.

It's one thing to have a desire to improve your home non-conference slate, but these days it takes some real work to actually pull it off. The growing prevalence of tournaments at neutral sites in November and December has imposed a noticeable reduction in the number of attractive, major-conference matchups inside on-campus gyms.

If you're a coach who's trying to walk the precarious RPI line, it simply makes more sense to schedule more tournaments at neutral sites and fewer home-and-home setups that increase the chances of a loss when you venture into a difficult environment.

Clemson's home basketball attendance was down 12.4 percent last year, and there were multiple reasons for that. A weak non-conference home schedule probably had something to do with it.

Take out the ACC/Big Ten challenge game against Michigan, and the Tigers played Western Carolina, Wofford, South Carolina State, Savannah State, UNC Greensboro, Delaware State, East Carolina and The Citadel.

No, not very sexy.

A tip of the cap to Brownell for trying to spice things up. Gives us something to look forward to, even in June.

LW