Brad Brownell isn’t a big fan of the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately crowd.

Clemson’s veteran men’s basketball coach also knows what he signed up for.

So as Brownell spoke with media members for roughly 45 minutes in the bowels of Littlejohn Coliseum on Wednesday, he played a verbal balancing act. To use his words, Brownell isn’t “satisfied or happy” that Clemson flirted with a losing record this past season (17-16) and finished 10th in the ACC standings. A year after participating in the 2021 NCAA Tournament, the Tigers, playing most of the season with an injured PJ Hall and missing senior forward Hunter Tyson for more than a month because of an injury, weren’t a part of any postseason tournament, the first time that’s happened since 2017.

But Brownell also pointed to the fact that Clemson has been in the top half of the ACC in wins in recent years and that only once during his tenure have the Tigers finished a season with more losses than wins. It’s a mark of consistency that Brownell feels a certain contingent of Clemson fans don’t appreciate as much as they should.

“I know there’s a level of some frustration with us and our program with wanting more and wanting more, and believe me, the guy who wants it the most is me,” Brownell said. “But I think last season was an example of the kind of program we have. We’ve had one losing season since I’ve been the head coach at Clemson. You can go through the league, and almost every other school has had that or more. Most of them have had a lot more.

“My point to that is you saw in our kids fighting. We didn’t talk about like, hey, we’re trying to have a winning season, but we fought until the end. People don’t look at a lot of the details in our league. In the last five years in the ACC, we are seventh in wins (in the regular season). And there are some names behind us in the league that are bigger-name schools.”

But Brownell also acknowledged the NCAA Tournament is the measuring stick for programs and their coaches. And while Clemson’s last two tournament berths have come in the last five years (the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 tournament), those are the only appearances the Tigers have made on the sport’s grandest stage under Brownell since he took over the program in 2010.

Brownell also had his contracted extended by his old boss, Dan Radakovich, before this past season, which came with $400,000 raise this year and will run through the 2025-26 season. His total compensation will reach $3 million by the end of it.

Shortly after this past season, he got a reminder of his team’s shortcomings from his new boss, first-year athletic director Graham Neff, who wrote in a letter to season ticket holders that it “did not meet our expectations.” Brownell said he agreed with Neff’s assessment and took it one step further, adding there’s another level he believes his program is capable of reaching.

“We’re not going to shy away from expectations,” Brownell said. “I want to try to go to a Final Four here.”

Even Brownell would have had a hard time saying that with a straight face during the first half of his tenure, but with recent facility upgrades as well as some fundraising efforts on his part, Brownell said that’s no longer the case. The most notable addition has been the construction of Swann Pavilion, which has served as the men’s and women’s basketball practice facility complete with locker rooms and coaches’ offices since 2016. 

“I’ve helped raise a lot of money to create interest (in men’s basketball). I’m really proud of that, and I don’t think that’s been said enough by a lot of people,” Brownell said. “There’s a lot of support with basketball financially as well as things that have happened to generate enough interest for us to have some things facility-wise that weren’t here when I got here. Frankly, we had them at some of the mid-major schools I was at. Now we’re in a good place.”

Brownell said there are no other “drastic” commitments he needs from the administration at this point to help Clemson reach its goal of becoming a more consistent tournament team. The bulk of the work left to do, he said, is on the court, which starts with developing top-end talent.

“You’ve got to have one or two all-conference players. You’ve got to have that,” Brownell said. “Some of that can be recruiting or different player development, but we’ve got to have guys that are difference-makers. As much as everyone wants to say, hey, this coach draws up this great play, a lot of times it’s a player making a play that wins a game. We’ve got to consistently produce guys that are good enough to make those plays.”

The Tigers have one player trending in that direction in Hall, who earned all-ACC honorable mention honors after averaging a team-high 15.5 points and 5.8 rebounds as part of a breakout sophomore campaign. Clemson also has the other half of its starting frontcourt returning in Tyson (10.0 points, 5.5 rebounds), who’s using his COVID year to come back for a fifth season.

The Tigers lost three significant pieces of their backcourt rotation, including transferring point guards Nick Honor and Al-Amir Dawes, but Clemson has already found one replacement in transfer Jaelin Llewellyn, a first-team all-Ivy League performer for Princeton this past season. Chase Hunter is also returning on the perimeter after starting 15 games as a sophomore, and Clemson has two more scholarships available that Brownell could use — and likely will — to further add to the 2022-23 roster.

“I’m incredibly excited about next year and optimistic,” Brownell said. “Just think we have a chance to have a special season.”

With everyone on the same page as far as expectations go, it will certainly be a crucial one for Brownell and the long-term future of the program.

“That’s our expectation is to make the tournament,” Brownell said. “That’s what we’re trying to do, and we’re getting to the point that, hey, we need to get in there and even do more. We need to try to get more Sweet 16s, Final Fours and those kinds of things. We can do that here.”

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