Clemson basketball: Loses assistant, gains transfer guard; what’s it mean?

The comings and goings in this whirlwind of an offseason for Clemson basketball continued on Tuesday.

First, it was assistant coach Antonio Reynolds Dean taking a job with the new staff at the University of Georgia.

This feels like a significant loss for Brad Brownell and the Tigers.  Reynolds Dean worked with the Tigers big men and if you saw the improvement in P.J. Hall from year one to year two, he’s the coach to thank in large part.

Considering the Tigers have two younger big men that need development in Ian Schieffelin and Ben Middlebrooks, this is a setback, depending, of course, on who the replacement for Reynolds Dean is.

All was not lost yesterday though as the Tigers received a commitment from one of the top guards in the transfer portal, Jaelin Llewellyn formerly of Princeton.

Earlier in the month I noted with the transfers of Nick Honor and Al-Amir Dawes, the Tigers appeared to be trying to get bigger at the guard position and the addition of the 6’2 Llewellyn continues that trend.

The Tiger guards now look like this: 6’3 Josh Beadle, 6’3.5 Alex Hemenway and Chase Hunter and 6’6 incoming freshman Chauncey Gibson, making the Tigers much larger at the position in which Honor and Dawes sometimes struggled to get shots off.

Still, the Tigers have about 2,600 minutes to fill at the guard position with the losses of Dawes, Honor and David Collins, which makes you wonder if they’re still in the portal hunting for another guard that can contribute.

This is where I’d usually say this is a make or break season for Brad Brownell and it very well may be, but I’m not betting on it.

I speculated earlier that being new to his position, Graham Neff would not make a move after this past season and that proved to be true.

We’ll see what next season holds, both on the court and in the athletic director’s office.