Clemson Men’s Basketball isn’t getting the respect Tiger fans expected

Clemson Men’s Basketball is coming off its best finish in the NCAA Tournament since the early 1980s. Fan anticipation for next season is higher than it has been in a very long time.

PJ Hall (understandably) elected to enter the NBA Draft, but Chase Hunter decided to return for his final season of eligibility.

The Tigers did lose four players – Josh Beadle, Jack Clark, RJ Godfrey, and Alex Hemenway – to the transfer portal. They also added four players: Myles Foster, Viktor Lakhin, Christian Reeves, and Jaeden Zachary.

Tiger fans have been very positive about the portal additions. The general feeling is that head coach Brad Brownell added the talent needed to fill the holes in the line-up. While two trips in a row to the Elite 8 is a big task, most fans have felt the team is in an excellent position to be competitive again in the Atlantic Coast Conference and equal or surpass the tournament seeding they received last season (the Tigers were the 6-seed in the West Region).

It appears that people outside Tiger Nation are not quite as enthusiastic about their fortunes for 2024-25.

Clemson was not included in the Way Too Early Top 25 by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello that was updated following the NBA Draft withdrawal deadline (so it considered Hunter’s return to the team). Borzello didn’t even include them in his next five.

In the latest projections by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, Clemson is projected as a 10-seed and among the last four teams that don’t have to go to Dayton for a play-in game.

It is difficult to gauge exactly how the industry feels about the incoming transfers in comparison to the outgoing transfers. 247 has Clemson’s incoming class ranked very low (in the 70s) but they aren’t including Foster in that equation for some reason. Similarly, On3 doesn’t have a ranking for Hemenway, so again we can’t compare the two groups apples to apples.

What I gleaned from the scouting industry is that, very broadly, they feel that what Clemson brought in covers what Clemson lost in the portal, but it doesn’t cover what Clemson lost to the NBA and the exhaustion of eligibility. This likely means people like Borzello and Lunardi see the transfers as equal swaps, but they don’t cancel the loss of Hall or Joe Girard.

Borzello and Lunardi aren’t on an island. FOX/Field of 68 analyst John Fanta and CBS’s Gary Parrish do not project Clemson as a Top 25 team in 2024-25 either. They also compiled their rankings after Hunter announced his return.

That doesn’t mean that Clemson fans shouldn’t continue to be excited about next year. Most analysts are probably forgetting Jake Heidbreder, who transferred in last year from Air Force but missed the season while recovering from surgery. Heidbreder is a sharpshooter that I hope can be the player I always hoped Hemenway would be if it weren’t for constant injuries.

There is also the failing of most analysts these days who only look at portal additions and rarely give credit to the potential improvement of veterans returning from the previous season. For Clemson, those guys are Ian Schieffelin and Chauncey Wiggins, both of whom have shown improvement season over season in their college careers.

It isn’t a bad thing that everyone else is sleeping on Clemson. Playing from ahead is something this program does not have a lot of experience with yet. Emerging from the shadows might be the best way for the Tigers to position themselves for continued success in 2024-25.