Should Clemson basketball fans just accept that we’re living in never-ending purgatory?
No one is going to look back at the 2020 Clemson basketball season and say that the Tigers were mediocre, but no one is likely to hang a banner, either.
The 2020-21 Clemson basketball season has been a topsy-turvy affair where we’ve seen the Tigers ranked and flying high, and then we’ve seen them go on a losing streak that included multiple losses by more than 20 points.
Just as Clemson finished the regular season with a victory, the Tigers were quickly eliminated from the ACC Tournament on Wednesday afternoon following a 67-64 loss to a depleted Miami team. The Tigers had the first night off from the ACC Tournament while the Hurricanes- a 13-seed- battled Boston College to an 80-76 victory.
As we approach the end of this week, we’ll see NCAA Selection Sunday take place and the expectation is that we’ll hear the Tigers’ name called. In Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket, he has Clemson solidly in the field as a 7-seed.
Is making the NCAA Tournament good enough for Clemson basketball fans? If so, that’s being accomplished.
There is no one fan or analyst who gets to determine what a ‘successful’ season looks like, unless you win the whole thing, of course.
Clemson could be eliminated from the big dance in the first round and many will still call it a successful season because the Tigers made the big tournament. Others wouldn’t call it a successful season even if the Tigers advanced to the Sweet 16, Elite 8 or beyond.
I’m not here to tell you what a successful season looks like or what your expectations should be of Clemson basketball. I’m just here to tell you that, at some point, Tiger fans have to look in the mirror and ask themselves if they’re okay with accepting less in the basketball program than ‘best.’
Making the NCAA Tournament is historically a big deal- Clemson has only done it 12 times in its history– but let’s not pretend as if that would be a successful barometer if this were football. You can make the NCAA Tournament and finish 6th, 7th, 8th and sometimes even 9th in the ACC. There are 68 teams in the field. Let’s not pretend that finishing inside the top-50 would be accepted around here if it were football.
Now, we understand that football will always hold precedence over basketball in these parts and we don’t expect that to change.
That being said, should you not want the best out of the basketball program as well? Or is finishing inside the top-50 good enough?
Perhaps with all the cheating and ‘under the table’ operations going on in college basketball today, finishing where the Tigers have (and doing it cleanly) is the best that can be achieved. We should also note that Clemson has never historically been a power house in basketball and it stands to reason that if the Tigers were to land a ‘hall of fame’ caliber coach, that he would leave for a bigger job just a few years into his tenure.
Two things can be true: We can accept that today’s college basketball is extremely hard to win cleanly and we can also accept that expecting more out of the basketball program is not a bad thing.
I’m not here to tell you what changes should be made or what should happen within the program. I’m just here to ask this simple question: Are Clemson basketball fans content to accept living in purgatory or do you think there might be something bigger on the horizon?