How Clemson became a basketball school for at least a couple seconds

Before last week, how much time had you spent in the last year thinking about the Clemson Tigers basketball program? (Don’t answer that if you have a relative on the team.)

Basketball is not Clemson’s thing. While the football program has one of the best home atmospheres in the country and has won two national championships since 1981 — the most recent coming 15 months ago — basketball has mostly done squat.

The women’s team hasn’t played in the NCAA tournament since 2002 and the men had missed six in a row before this year. But now, the Tigers are in the Big Dance and thriving. When they tip against Kansas on Friday night in Omaha, it will mark their first Sweet 16 appearance since 1997, and fourth ever.

They have made just one Elite Eight, in 1980, and history says Kansas won’t lose until it gets to that round. But the Tigers have a chance.

Defense. That’s it, really.

The Tigers’ offense made a big jump from 169th in the country in adjusted efficiency during the 2014-15 season to 45th in 2015-16. Since then, they have jogged in place on that side of the ball. This season’s team was 43rd, a slight step backward from No. 35 in 2016-17.

What changed this year is the Tigers now have an elite defense. They jumped from 86th last year in adjusted efficiency to seventh this year, out of 351 Division I teams. Coach Brad Brownell’s teams are typically better at preventing points than scoring them. That was also a hallmark of his first Clemson team, which made the tournament in 2011.

The Tigers have made their defensive strides by getting tougher inside. Teams are shooting a miserable 44 percent inside the arc against them, a decline from 52 percent last year. They’ve gone from 93rd to 23rd in blocked-shot rate, and are now swatting away more than 13 percent of all their opponents’ shots from the field.

It’s not that they’ve gotten bigger or longer. Brownell didn’t add a freshman taller than 6’7, and Clemson ranks lower in average roster height than it did in 2017.

The development of 6’9 forward Elijah Thomas, a Texas A&M transfer from two years ago, has been critical. Thomas has more than doubled his minutes year over year, and he’s emerged as the Tigers’ best shot-blocker. He’s a voracious defensive rebounder, as well. Those skills are necessary when Thomas is so often the only Tiger on the court taller than 6’7.

Clemson’s 84-53 destruction of SEC regular-season champion Auburn in the round of 32 was one of the most impressive performances of the tournament so far. Auburn shot just 10-of-29 (29.4 percent) on twos and 7-of-32 (21.9) on triples. Clemson’s offense meanwhile, steadily poured on points, including 10 made three-pointers at a 38.5 percent clip. (The Tigers only struggled at the foul line, where they were a mediocre 16-of-23.)

They’re not bad. Clemson is a 4.5-point underdog in Las Vegas and has a 46 percent chance to win, according to Ken Pomeroy’s projection model. The Tigers might feel like bigger underdogs than they are, because they have almost no basketball tradition to speak of and the Jayhawks have it coming out of their beaks. But this is a pretty even matchup, because Kansas’ greatest strength runs up directly against Clemson’s.

KU is better on offense than defense. The Jayhawks are fifth in adjusted efficiency when they have the ball, and 46th when they don’t. The difference between their offense and defense is the same as the gulf between Clemson’s defense and offense. This game is close to a toss-up for that reason, with a slight edge to a Jayhawks team that should have the Omaha crowd on its side. The only real surprise will be if the game isn’t close at the end.

The biggest danger for Clemson is if Kansas gets hot and makes a bunch of threes. The Jayhawks are excellent from the outside, and Clemson’s perimeter defense isn’t nearly as special as its work closer to the basket. The Tigers will need to close out effectively.

They can do it, though. Kansas is the Midwest Region’s No. 1 seed, and a formidable foe to be certain. But don’t discount Clemson just because it’s supposedly a “football school.” The Tigers were a well-deserved No. 5 seed, and they’re playing so much better than that now.