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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 31, 2011

Brad Brownell

THE MODERATOR: We have with us now Clemson head basketball coach, Brad Brownell.
Coach, if you could, a few comments about your team and we'll open for questions.
COACH BROWNELL: Coming off of a great game, very good Florida State team. Very proud of our guys defended. Probably the first time all year where we have defended a full 40 minutes and certainly need to do that more often, especially here on the road if we are going to try to win some road games. Got good play again out of our seniors, Demontez Stitt and Jerai Grant.

Q. I was wondering if about halfway through your first year here, if you have been surprised with anything in the league or about the league.
COACH BROWNELL: I don't know that I've been surprised by anything. It's everything I expected. Great venues to play in. I think our place is terrific. I think we have a very good home court and students and fans are very supportive and excited about our team. And then having been to Florida State, Maryland and Chapel Hill, I've really enjoyed those environments. I think the fans are very passionate as you would expect. They are very supportive of their team and as a result, it's been very hard to win on the road.
But you know, just really enjoying it. It's good competition. The coaches have been great to deal with. And you know, enjoying the time in the league.

Q. What do you see for the second half with your team? What do you think is going to happen? I know you mentioned going at it for 40 minutes on defense. Anything else?
COACH BROWNELL: We just have to continue to just get better. I think there's a lot of basketball left. We have not won a game on the road in the league yet, and before we can become any kind of factor at all, we have got to go out on the road and win some games there and prove that we can play well outside of our building. We have been in some good games. We lost a close one to Maryland -- the last minute or two against Carolina and had the lead against Florida down there but couldn't finish the job.
Our team has improved but we do have two seniors, Demontez Stitt and Jerai Grant who have some experience and are playing well and I think that helps us in terms of being on the road and hopefully settling our team down. But until we play well and finish off some games on the road, again, we are just like everybody else.

Q. Is there anything in particular that you're looking for while preparing to face Virginia?
COACH BROWNELL: I think Virginia is a very good three-point shooting team. I think they can spread the court on you and penetrate, and when they make shots, they are hard to deal with. They had a really good game with Boston College, went to the wire, and played well at Duke, which not very many people do.
So I think that speaks to how they handle themselves and the way they take care of the basketball, and they have great defensive balance and don't give up many easy baskets. I think that you have to really work to beat them.
And again, with some young players playing right now, those guys, Joe Harris, KT Harrell, those guys are freshman and really improving. I think the longer the year goes, the better they are going to be.

Q. Can you talk about the impact Jerai Grant has had on the team this year?
COACH BROWNELL: Really good. It's been fun to watch him improve. He was kind of a role player last year, didn't get a lot of touches. Kind of scored off of -- when they double-teamed Trevor Booker (ph), or if you got an offensive rebound and put back, didn't get many touches.
But for us it's been good, he's worked hard and has put on some weight. He's been a guy that's improved. He's been able to step out and make some 15- to 17-foot shots and he's scoring in the low post and certainly a terrific front-court athlete; he blocks shots and finishes above the rim. So he's been a fun kid to coach and I'm really happy for him that he's having the kind of senior year that he wants.

Q. We have touched on this before and I wanted to revisit it for a second. Have you been able at Clemson to get the players to come by your office a couple of times a week and talk about things other than basketball the way you did at UNC Wilmington?
COACH BROWNELL: You know what, it's something that we are working on. I don't think we are there yet. It's improved through the course of the season.
Yeah, I think it's important to have a relationship with your players outside the basketball court. And one of the things that has made it little tougher is our offices aren't right in Little John. We are right next door. So even if even if a guy comes over and lifts weights or gets some shots in, he has to continue to come on over and that's made it a little difficult.
But it's something that I have stressed to our players, and they certainly do come by some, not as much as I would like, but I'll be honest with you, as the season goes on, there are times when they probably don't want to be around me as much as I would like for them to be around, just like my wife.

Q. But it's something that you feel is important and you're going to work on?
COACH BROWNELL: Yeah, I do think it's important and I think it's something that I think it helps you build a stronger relationship with your players to be able to coach them better.
It's something that we are emphasizing and we really want that with these guys here, and you know, it certainly is a lot better than it was when I first got here, and we have made progress. And that's not just me. It's the staff. But it's something you've got to really work at all the time.

Q. What's ideal, is it getting them to come by twice a week, or --
COACH BROWNELL: You know, it's just -- it's just getting them to come by. There's no number, there's no, you know -- it's just getting them to come by and just pop their head in and say anything; hey, I saw a good movie last night, coach, did you watch these ACC teams play, or how are you doing.
I did have one of my players say that to me this year when we were struggling a little bit earlier in the season, and we actually won a game and I wasn't real thrilled with how we played. And I had one or two of them come by and I think they knew that I wasn't real happy. They came to check on me and that meant a lot. It doesn't happen very often but it made me feel good because it cheered me up to let me know that they are thinking about not just themselves and not just the players, but they were thinking about everybody.
When we are talking about the team, we are talking about everybody, the coaches, the players, the managers, the trainers, everybody involved with the program and I think that's significant.
So, yeah, certainly we don't have a number on it but we want to spend time together.

Q. Do you want them to talk to you or assistant coaches?
COACH BROWNELL: I don't care. I just want them around. It can be an assistant. It can be me. It can be anybody. We just want them to come through and see each other at off-times, not just the scheduled basketball times. We want them to see each either and we want to try to see them at some other times during the day.

Q. Well, do you think something like this helps, because like you said, there are times when they probably don't want to see you, and after a while, there's only so many times you can tell a guy to box out.
COACH BROWNELL: Yeah, I do, I do think it helps. When a guy is not playing well, you've probably been on him a little bit in practice. It takes a guy with great character to come by the office then. You know, but when guys are playing good and when they are feeling better about themselves, after our game against Florida State, it's probably not surprising that we might have a couple guys stroll through here, they are feeling pretty good about the way they played and their team and that's fine, too. We feel it's important to spends time with our players and we want to have meaningful relationships with them. It's got to be about more than basketball to do that.

Q. We have probably touched on this at times the last few weeks, but the transition that you've had, do you feel like you're ahead of where you thought you might be this first year, or are you behind? Is that a bar that has kind of shifted as you've gone through different periods of the season?
COACH BROWNELL: You know, it's a good question. I don't really know how to answer it from the standpoint, I don't know where I thought the bar would be to be honest with you. Just kind of jumping in, any time you take over a new team and new program, there's so much -- and then you come into Clemson, an ACC level school that my time was going to be taken for so many different things, that I didn't know exactly what to expect.
I knew when I left from Wilmington to Wright State, you leave from one mid major to another, you kinds of know what all of the expectations are and what you're going to have to do off the court, responsibilities and all of those things. And any time there's an adjustment, it's going to take you time to meet new people and feel comfortable in a situation.
Coming to this level, there's just more things that you have to do. I guess because of all of those expectations, having a new team, understanding a new league, and recruiting and all that, I don't know that I had an idea of where we would be or all of that.
I did feel like our team had a chance to be really decent. I thought we had a chance to be better than some people thought, you know, if our seniors played well. If Demontez and Jerai played and improved, and I feel like because we had two senior that is had gained experience and been through the wars a little bit, I thought that would be helpful.
But also I didn't know how much we were going to buy into each other. There was a little inner turmoil about some things that I didn't really expect that have made it difficult and maybe slowed some things down in terms of early on and there's just a trust factor that you have to have with your guys and get to. I think we have done better with all of that and that's part of the reason, as much as anything of why we are playing better.

Q. So now do you kind of, I don't know, install more things, put more things or just build on what has already been created?
COACH BROWNELL: You know, for a long time, we have not done a lot of new things. We may try to do a few new things here down the stretch, but not too much. I think we just have to keep getting bet we are what we are doing.
I've got to remember, every time I want to think about doing something new or adding things, it's taken us a long while to get any good at all with what we are doing. It was a slow process. Although I talked to a lot of people that follow us regularly; it was a slow practice.
Every time would I go to a practice I was frustrated sometimes early on because I didn't think we were improving fast enough or we had to stop and teach something I thought we already knew and so we had to spend a lot more time on it. I think we are just doing with a we have been teaching.
We are just going to better. We are recognizing it and reacting quicker, and I think that's part of why we have played better here in the last six weeks or so. There's more reacting by our players. They are seeing things and making decisions and not having to think about things maybe like they were at the beginning of the season.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for taking time being with us today and we'll hear from you same time again next week.

End of FastScripts

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