Clemson's NCAA Tournament bracket announced |
Clemson men’s basketball is dancing again.
The 6th-seeded Tigers (21-11) will take on 11-seed and Mountain West champ New Mexico (26-9) on Friday in Memphis within the West Region (LA finals). The winner faces the winner of 3-seed Baylor and 14-seed Colgate. UNC is the top seed in the region overall, with Arizona the No. 2. Clemson's opener will tip at approx. 3:10 ET at the FedExForum and air on TruTV. The Tigers have been bolstered by first-team All-ACC big man PJ Hall (18.8 points/6.7 rebounds), ACC Most Improved Player Ian Schieffelin (9.6 points/9.5 rebounds), grad transfer guard Joseph Girard III (15.7 points) and senior guard Chase Hunter (12.3 points). They made it to as high as No. 13 in the AP Poll with a 9-0 start, but a roller-coaster rest of the season hasn’t seen the Tigers ranked since the January 8 poll. From February onwards, Clemson went 7-5, including the program’s second-ever win at UNC and a loss at sub-.500 Notre Dame. Clemson first made the NCAA Tournament in 1979-80, and the program has made 14 total appearances, with four now coming in the Brad Brownell era. The Tigers went into the selections with a 7-seed average in the BracketMatrix collection of bracketology projections. Clemson entered Sunday’s action with a No. 35 ranking from the NCAA’s NET resume tool. It has a strong five wins versus NET Quadrant 1 opponents—two in the Top 10 (No. 8 UNC and No. 9 Alabama) and three overall in the upper tier of those Q1 wins (a win at No. 40 Pitt also). Clemson had zero upper-tier Q1 wins last year. Another difference from Clemson’s failed NCAAs bid last year is the number of bad losses – just one to a Quadrant 3 team in the 2023-24 campaign compared to two in the Quadrant 4 and four in the Q3/Q4 area total in 2023. The overall strength of schedule is also vastly different from last year, with a No. 23 ranking this year compared to a No. 132 total SOS last season. Clemson last played in the NCAA Tournament in the COVID-affected 2020-21 campaign, where all the games were contained to Indiana. The 7th-seeded Tigers fell 60-56 to 10-seed Rutgers in the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The previous appearance in 2017-18 was a Sweet 16 run. Brownell is 3-3 in the NCAA Tournament at Clemson. His teams at UNC-Wilmington and Wright State did not pull off an upset (0-3), with UNCW falling by two points and three points in their bids. Historically, the closest regional pod in proximity to Clemson’s campus for the Tigers was Atlanta in the 1987 season. (Metrics per WarrenNolan.com) First look at the 2024 NCAA Tournament bracket WEST Region, where North Carolina is the No. 1 seed: pic.twitter.com/waZWD42wq1
THE BRACKET IS SET 😤
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 17, 2024
let the madness begin pic.twitter.com/dF2y29XrEa
Game info for No. 11 New Mexico vs. No. 6 Clemson
— Geoff Grammer (@GeoffGrammer) March 18, 2024
• FRIDAY
• 1:10 p.m. MT, 3:10 p.m. ET
• Memphis
• truTV (finding it is a tradition unlike any other)
• Announcers: Spero Dedes, Jim Spanarkel, Jon Rothstein
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