The Day that Clemson BBall died – Tony Bennett {part 8}

May 22, 2023, 5:17 PM

Now, for ten years we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me ------ fr. “American Pie” (1971)

what you know / synopsis

What you know: A decade or so ago, Clemson played a season ending game with Pitt. Two stats inform you the importance of the game:

- with a win, the Tigers attain 11-7 in the ACC, and with reasonable overall SOS, that is historically (over 28 years) a 100% guarantee of an NCAAT invite;

- the Tigers hold a 5-point lead over Pitt with only 6 seconds to go, and historical data analysis tells us there is less than 0.2% chance of losing the game.

Statistics tells us this affirmatively, yet even still Clemson loses the game, and the NCAAT bid.

What you don’t know: Strangely, you feel you’ve been here before…

Synopsis: Rant. (And Tony Bennett is not just a good singer.)

the failure of leadership

As Coaching stratagems go, when you overtly cost your team a spot in the NCAAT, it just doesn’t get any worse than that. It’s like a surgeon’s malfeasance killing a patient. You’ve done exactly the opposite of your stated purpose; you’ve violated your Coach’s Hippocratic Oath.

And then to lose the NCAAT invite on such an easy coaching choice only compounds that ignoble travesty almost beyond comprehension. After this display of coaching prowess, there is little reason to recommend that Brad Brownell actually had/has a good feel for the game of basketball. This was just too basic of a risk assessment, too easy of a choice. Said another way: it’s one thing to have a lot of basketball knowledge; it’s entirely another thing to be able to make good decisions based on that knowledge; and yet even another thing as well to have a supreme “feel” for what to do at the right moment. Even basic knowledge seems to have missed the moment here.

From then on out, for as long as he shall coach - every long scoring drought, every big lead given up, every failure to execute the fundamentals, every poor lineup choice, every failure to call a needed Timeout, every failure to Coach-up and play a young talent, every failure to stop the impatient chucking of three’s, every failure to win a “must game”, every failure to beat a NET 250 - all just comes back to the failure to know how to inbound a simple pass; all comes back to the failure to properly assess risk while being up by 5 with only 13 seconds to play; all comes back to the failure to get the virtually 100% guaranteed win and the NCAAT invite that went with it;

all comes back to the lack of feel for the game and nuance.

His supporters like to say that Brad Brownell is a “good X’s and O’s” Coach. Please. There is nothing about the data that supports that. Nothing:

- not the 18-point lead blown with 9 minutes to go against Georgia Tech in the 2016 ACCT;
- nor the 13-point 2nd half lead frittered away to the same team barely two weeks earlier;
- not the 23-point home court lead forked over to conference cellar dweller BC in 2022;
- not the 14 point lead at FSU in 2023, somehow lost, but then recaptured;
- nor the 11-point lead handed back at NET 168 BC in 2023;
- not the 20-point 2nd half lead dropped against NIT opponent Oakland in 2017;
- not the 18-point 2nd half lead sacrificed at Florida State in the otherwise revered 2018;
- not the 16-point halftime lead given up to NC State in the 2019 ACCT;
- not the 97% certain 9-point lead with only 5 minutes to go gifted at Miami in 2022;
- not the 96% certain 10-point lead squandered with 9 to go at home against Miami in 2020;
- nor the 12-point lead at the 14-minute mark capitulated to Colorado earlier in 2020;
- not the 11-points at 10 to go mark wasted against UNCheat at home in 2022;
- not the 15-point lead lost to those veritable titans from Morehead State in 2023;
- not the 16-point 1st half lead punted to St. Bonaventure in 2022;
- certainly not the 99+% certain 6-point lead choked away with only 34 seconds left against 2019 NC State in Raleigh; et al, ad nauseam…

The available desultory verbs die out long before the bad losses.

But, Pitt v. Clemson 2014 makes the question simple: why shouldn’t a Head Coach be expected to emulate end-game decisions proven over time to be essentially 100% statistically successful?

Either you’re a Coach, or you’re just a Coach’s son. Tony Bennett is a Coach.

*******

the failure of stewardship

But Clemson BBall didn’t die that day just because of a monstrously bad decision by Brownell; no… no… the Clemson faithful, as well as the Clemson Admin, had and have their part in this roiling Shakespearean tragedy as well. Indeed, the protection racket that is the Brownell mob was in full force almost immediately after that 2014 game. Yes, even 10 years ago.

Within minutes of the game being over, and for weeks thereafter, cover was being run by all the usual suspects you still know now, offering all their same narratives.

*******

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