Thursday November 29, 2007

Program Builder

Built the Right Way
As each game and each day passes I become more and more impressed with Oliver Purnell and his staff and now understand what the term “Program Builder” means.

I barely remember Tates Locke but do remember the excitement around the Clemson basketball program in the mid-seventies but unfortunately I remember how they signed the great players.

Bill Foster was a good guy who had a solid program. The 1980 team was the best in school history and several others were very good. I consider his stint here a success. The program had good players and for the most part they were good guys. Foster faced a very tough ACC but he was successful.

Cliff Ellis would build teams but not a program. He won every three or four years but did it with JUCO players too often and you never got the sense that there was stability from year to year.

Rick Barnes was the dynamic personality that Foster and Ellis were not and he was a swashbuckling gunslinger. It was refreshing to see a Clemson coach stand up to Dean Smith and the ACC but Barnes was not a guy that was going to build a long-term success at Clemson. My main concern and complaint with Barnes was his self promotion instead of the promotion of Clemson basketball.

Larry Shyatt was a popular guy in the community but to be honest the program went down fairly quick with Shyatt at the helm. The talent level dipped under his watch so he was anything but a program builder.

It has taken Purnell a while but Tiger fans now have a great taste of what it feels like to build a program and build it the right way. This program is not cheating. They are not building individual teams with JUCO players. He is not a self-promoter. And he has a clue what he is doing.

Purnell is not the best in the country at any one aspect but he has very few weaknesses. He is a good X and O guy. He is a solid recruiter. Purnell is a good motivator and one of the most positive coaches in college basketball. He has put together a terrific staff.

But most importantly he has built a brand with Clemson basketball.

When the staff goes on the road now the kids they are recruiting know about Clemson basketball and know what kind of style Purnell prefers. If the prospect decides to come to Clemson to play basketball he can expect to play a full court pressure defense. Purnell has a few different looks with the pressure but you won’t watch a Tiger basketball game and not see some sort of full court pressure.

The program has really hit full stride in the last two seasons with the 17-0 start last year and the high ranking and even higher expectations this year. But more impressive is the idea that this program is solid and will not have any hangovers from their success. The staff at Clemson has invested countless hours of relentless recruiting and the dividends are showing up.

Each year the recruiting classes seem to get better and better. There is not a feeling for the followers of the program that this has to be the year because the program will fall the following season. I understand the ACC is a great conference and I also understand the nature of intercollegiate athletics today where parity means you can go from worst to first and back to worst in a three year stretch. But that is not the feeling I get about Clemson basketball.

The senior class of Cliff Hammonds, James Mays and Sam Perry is very good and will be missed next season. Hammonds is the best leader in school history and Mays is a tough matchup on the offensive end.

The junior class includes K.C. Rivers, Raymond Sykes and maybe Julius Powell. Rivers is a terrific scorer and one of the best rebounding 6-5 players in America and Sykes continues to develop.

But the last two classes are better than those groups and the underclassmen are farther along than the upperclassmen at the same stage.

There are two main reasons why I am ultra-excited about Purnell and Clemson basketball. First the program gets better every year. It is hard to imagine but the record has also gotten better each year. At some point that becomes mathematically impossible but the improvement has been every impressive.

The other aspect that has me excited is the brand compared to what we see with the rest of the sport.

I think the sport of basketball is broken. The NBA markets individual players instead of teams and this has created major issues in the sport. The college game is hurt because of the players jumping to the NBA and using the colleges to showcase their skills for future employment. The high school game is a joke and perhaps the biggest problem we have is AAU basketball.

The entire system is broken because it has become “me” instead of “we”. The idea of sharing the basketball is lost. The concept of team is secondary. Players worry more about his touches instead of team morale. We have major issues and I am not sure we have not passed the point of no return. I am not sure we can ever get fundamentals back in the game and that is a shame.

But that is what makes watching Clemson basketball more refreshing. Purnell has mostly good kids that have bought into the system. Hammonds spends long hours each week in the architecture lab but can be found early at practice. Ride by Littlejohn late at night and you will most likely see Terrence Ogelsby’s car there as he is working on his game. Demontez Stitt and Jerai Grant are mentally beyond their years on the court.

This is a basketball team and this is a basketball program. Teams are not seen today in the sport and programs have not been seen in this part of the country in years. Thanks OP. Thanks for being a program builder.

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