People complaining about the students are missing the point

Mar 2, 2015, 10:10 AM

The lack of student attendance is a symptom of the problem. The real issue at heart is the overall lack of interest and buzz surrounding the program. It's not just students who aren't attending the games, no one is attending. The lower bowl has empty row after empty row in both the student and the general sections. Almost no one around town talks about Clemson basketball any more. People aren't calling into radio stations to talk about Clemson basketball. Heck, even Tigernet doesn't talk about Clemson basketball nearly as much as it did in the past, except during the actual games.

If a student were to go to a Clemson basketball game for the first time on Saturday, do you think they'd come back? I was there, and Littlejohn was lifeless. There were times when you could hear a pin drop, and it only got somewhat loud a few times. People weren't into the game, the whole presentation felt very stale (I don't think they've updated anything regarding the gameday presentation in over a decade), and I doubt many people left the arena thinking "wow that was really cool. I have to come back for more games." There was a dad and his kid who were at what appeared to be their first game a few rows behind me, and I could hear everything they were saying. For some reason they thought the game was 4 quarters instead of 2 halves, and the little kid asked his dad if they could leave at halftime.

Changes have to be made to the Clemson game-day experience. The product we're putting on the court has to be improved as well. It was a major shock to the system when Purnell left and we went from being an uptempo team, to now being one of the slowest teams in college basketball from a pace perspective. When you couple a significant decrease in action with a decrease in success, it's easy to see why interest in Clemson basketball has waned in recent years.

Students and everyone else will come to games when there is a reason for them to come. First impressions are important, and the first impression this team made was losing to Winthrop and Gardner-Webb. Every step forward seemed to be followed by a huge step back. Beating a ranked Arkansas team, was followed by a home-loss to the worst team in the Big-10. Beating Auburn was followed by a 23-point loss to main our rivals, who are one of the worst teams in the SEC. The ACC season started 1-3 with two 20+ point losses. Just when we NCAA Tournament got mentioned, we lost 4 out of our next 5 games. Now the draw is to see if we can make the NIT, a tournament we already proved we were good enough to win last year.

They say college is all about making memories, and I honestly doubt any students missed out on a truly memorable experience on Saturday afternoon watching the 85th and 120th best college teams in the country grind it out on the hardwood in a game where GT didn't make their first FG until 14 minutes passed, and Clemson only made 2 FGs in the last 11 minutes of regulation. There are all kinds of ways to make lasting memories on a Friday and Saturday at Clemson. I yearn for the days when Clemson basketball games was what everyone around town looked forward to all week, but now, for most, Clemson basketball is little more than background noise until the football season begins.

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That's on the fans for being lifeless Saturday. Promotion had nothing to do with fans acting like the program is in disrepair. Our best selling point over the years at Clemson had been our fans. It's gotten past pathetic with our fanbase negativity towards some of our different teams. And the negativity even extends to football. We have fans that hate Tajh Boyd, the winningest QB in Clemson history and the only Clemson QB to have wins over FSU, Auburn, LSU, OSU, and UGA. We had fans on this board actively hoping that Martavis Bryant and Bashaud Breeland would be cut. Not only were both not cut, they both had good rookie seasons. So stop acting like a whiney little 5 year old girl and get out and support our teams and players.

People complaining about the students are missing the point

Lame excuses. This is a team about 3-4 wins from being an NCAA tournament team..

Wow, 4 wins from being an NCAA Tournament team....

BB does not win the games he is supposed to

I am pretty sure you take any legitimate point that is

I thought it was a well-thought-out post and he made some

One of the best posts on Tigernet EVER!***

Most of the students who really wanted to be

Re: People complaining about the students are missing the point

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