A lot has been made this year about the accomplishments of Clemson Football’s senior class, and deservedly so.

They left Clemson as not only the winningest group of seniors at Clemson or in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but in the history of College Football as well.

Led by guys named Christian Wilkins, Mitch Hyatt, Austin Bryant, Kendall Joseph and Hunter Renfrow, Clemson’s senior group posted a 55-4 record, won four ACC Championships, played in four College Football Playoffs, played in three national championship games and won two national championships.

It will be hard pressed for any group of seniors in any sport at Clemson to match or succeed what those seniors did during their time in Tigertown.

However, success is not always judged by just win and losses. Attitude, leadership, loyalty and commitment are also traits that can define a group of seniors, values the 2018 football seniors possessed as well.

Few Clemson fans know the names Dani Edwards, Aliyah Collier or Keniece Purvis. But they are every bit as important to Clemson’s women’s basketball program as Wilkins, Hyatt, Bryant, Joseph and Renfrow were to the football program.

For three years they were part of a program that could not get out of its own way. They struggled on the court, winning just four ACC games in 48 tries.

At any point, they could have walked away and left the program. They could have gone somewhere else where maybe they could have played with a better team and got the opportunity to experience things like playing in the NCAA Tournament or winning championships.

But they did not. They stayed committed to Clemson. They stuck with it, even through a coaching change. They remained loyal to Clemson and committed to the women’s basketball program.

More than anything, they displayed the leadership that has allowed Amanda Butler and her coaching staff to come in and turn a struggling program into a winner in just one season.

With Sunday’s win over Virginia Tech, Clemson’s women clinched a winning record in the ACC for the first time since the 2001-’02 season. It was their ninth win and it put them in position to earn the program its first NCAA Tournament bid in 17 years.

“It’s great. It feels really good,” said Butler, whose team improved to 18-10 overall. “To invest so much time and energy in a lot of different things and we have tried to be a team all year long that we really wanted to be about getting better every day. We really wanted to just have command of minds and energy and the things that we had control over and then we were going to be okay with whatever the scoreboard said.

“But it definitely feels really good for them, in particular the seniors, for all that effort and all that focus in the right things to be validated in wins. But nobody has given us anything. It feels good, but it also feels like a whole lot of hard work and a whole lot of hard work that is eventually validated by wins, that is a really special feeling and I am really happy for my team and in particular my seniors to be able to experience that.”

Edwards, Collier and Purvis, along with graduate transfer Simone Westbrook, concluded their careers at Littlejohn Coliseum as winners on Sunday, but they would have been winners whether they won the game or not. Their attitude, leadership, loyalty and commitment has been on display all season and throughout their Clemson careers.

Now, they are being rewarded for it as they have laid down the foundation for a new era of Clemson women’s basketball.

“We did not have much success in the previous years, but having a winning record, finally, it just shows how much we worked in the off-season and how much we continued to work during the season and how much we will continue to work going into the post-season,” Edwards said. “It is a very special time. I keep saying it is special because I have never got to experience it. The seniors never got to experience it. So, to finally have a winning record that shows all the hard work we have put in the past four years, it is pretty cool.”

Cool indeed.