ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 12, 2021

Brad Brownell

Naz Bohannon

Hunter Tyson

Clemson Tigers

Press Conference

^ Start

Q. Brad, obviously college sports you replace players every year, but a player like Aamir Simms, just everything that he did for you guys, how much more of a challenge is it trying to find roles for guys and gel a team around these new pieces?

BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, Aamir was a significant loss. Terrific player who had an unbelievable career at Clemson. As much as the points and rebounds, it was his personality. It was the way he approached practice every day, his work ethic, his smile, his personality. It just rubbed off on everyone.

We're going to miss a lot about him. Obviously there's not one player that you're going to go recruit or sign that's going to be like him. But I do think we have brought in some guys like Naz here and David Collins that are experienced and older players, and we've got a player like Hunter Tyson who's been in our program for four years and understands our culture and what's important to Clemson to win and be successful, and these guys have been very open, and they really get along well.

I think that in terms of the productivity, it'll be a bunch of different guys. PJ Hall getting an opportunity to play center full-time for us, but it'll be a bunch of different guys contributing to the points and rebounds.

I think the attitude, the personality part is just going out and getting good guys, and we've done that. We've gotten guys that like each other, that are respectful of the older players. I think our young guys are very respectful of the older players. We just have very good -- we have a good morale. We have a good feeling in our program and team, and some of that's because of the guys like Aamir Simms.

Q. Coach, Earl Grant is back here inside of the ACC over at BC. Just what you can say about your time that you got to spend with him at Clemson and what he brings to the ACC as a head coach now.

BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, I'm obviously a big fan of Earl's. When I took the job I was looking for somebody from South Carolina to help coach. Talked to a lot of different folks, and he was a name that kept coming up. Then to have the opportunity to work with him for several years and spend time and understand just how good a person he is, tremendous family man, great man of integrity, unbelievable basketball knowledge and competitor. He'll do great things at BC.

I'm happy for him. Happy for Jackie, his family. It'll be hard to coach against him. It won't be fun. But I'm happy that he's had success in the profession. It doesn't surprise me. I think he'll do good things at Boston College.

Q. You obviously know what this program was when you took it over. What does it mean to you how far the program has come that you can kind of dip into the portal and get a couple of guys who can be projected starters and guys who are high level right away for you?

BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, I think we've done a good job over the last decade of building our brand and improving our program in all areas. The facility improvements that we did five years ago have really started to pay off. I think it shows that Clemson wants to be good in basketball.

The first five years I was on the job it was hard. Two of those years we didn't have an arena. That's never easy for players in your program. We played a year up in Greenville. There was a lot that went into it, and I think we've worked really hard to build our program, build our brand, develop a culture where kids are having good experiences, we're being productive, we're winning games, we're graduating players.

And when you bring in guys like Naz or David Collins on a visit and they get to see what Clemson has to offer, I think it's impressive. They've seen success on the court, Sweet 16 and NCAA Tournament teams, they see guys graduating, they see a good place to go to school and get a grad degree like Naz is going to get.

Then I think they come around and meet your players and they see you have good guys in the program. So there's stability, there's a culture of success and work, and hopefully guys like Naz and David, that was a big part of why they chose Clemson.

Q. Naz, you had 1,200 points, 975 rebounds, and 275 assists at Youngstown State. Impressive each season. What's your expectation as a Tiger compared to when you were a Penguin or given the success that you had as a penguin?

NAZ BOHANNON: My expectations as a Tiger is to come in and obviously fit in, play my role, and do everything that I can do to help win.

If Coach tells me this game we need you to focus on rebounds, then I'm going to focus on rebounding that game. If it's passing this game, or the next game he might want me to score a little bit more points, just fitting that agenda and doing what Coach wants me to do to help the Tigers win.

Q. Brad, I think the story goes that you said if you work as hard as everybody says you do, anything is possible for you. How have you seen Naz establish that in terms of his work ethic?

BRAD BROWNELL: You know what, he's a very good competitor. He wants to do things the right way. He's been extremely coachable. He also has a very good presence about him. I mean, he's a grown man that's done a lot. He's been through a lot in his life. He's been through a lot with all he's achieved on the basketball court at Youngstown. So our guys respect that.

As much as anything, our guys respect the way that he treats them and they treat him, and so I think, again, that gets back to our culture and how I think our kids really like one another.

He's going to be fine as a player. That wasn't anything we were worried about. Again, his job and the way we recruited him is just to do what he said. He's a guy that's done a lot of different things. He's scored, he's rebounded a lot, he's passed it, he's made assists. He's going to be a versatile guy that helps us as much with his personality and his maturity and his approach to practice as he is with all that he's going to do on the court.

I think those are the intangibles that maybe aren't sexy but they're important to winning, and he and David have already brought a maturity level to our team that we needed.

Q. Hunter, you've been on the ACC academic superlative list each year while at Clemson. What is that secret of integrating academics and athletics?

HUNTER TYSON: I think that just goes back to how I was raised. Growing up, my parents really instilled a good work ethic into me and always talked about how important academics was as well as success on the basketball court, and just working hard in both.

I think that's why I've been able to be named to the ACC All-Academic Team several times.

Q. Naz and Hunter, knowing Clemson's success in football, what made you want to come to the basketball side of things and obviously improve that culture even more? And Hunter, where would you say that culture is with Clemson basketball under Brad Brownell?

NAZ BOHANNON: For me I would just say respecting everything that Coach did with the program and going into the portal. And researching what it was that I was looking for in a school I could respect the culture that he had put in place and the staples that the program stood for.

Once I got on the phone with Coach Brownell and talking to the assistants like Coach Dean and even meeting some of the guys, it was a no-brainer for me.

HUNTER TYSON: Like you asked about the culture under Coach Brad Brownell. If it's one thing we're going to do, we're going to work hard and we're going to treat people the right way. We just try and get better every day. We really focus on ourselves. We don't pay attention to any outside noise, what people might be picking us, talking about us. We really just focus on each other and try and get better every day.

Q. Brad, as far as replacing a couple guys at the backcourt, how do you go about using Al-Amir and Nick and some of our other pieces to try and replace what Clyde had, and obviously some of the other guys?

BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, Clyde was a good player. He had a very nice senior year and was getting better and better. Obviously had a major injury his junior year that he had to play with, torn ACL, but we do have experienced guards: Nick Honor and Al-Amir Dawes have both made big shots for us, they both hit game-winning shots. They both have been starters. They both have played a lot of minutes.

We played them together some last year. We may start them this year, I don't know, we'll see. Alex Hemenway is an experienced guy that started a few games and can really shoot the ball.

Our experience lies in our backcourt in terms of guys that played. Certainly Clyde is different because he was a bigger wing that really rebounded the ball defensively and took care of the ball, was a really good passer.

We tried to address some of that with David Collins, a grad transfer from South Florida who's 6'4" and 215 and a big strong wing, so we felt like he would help us a little bit in that area.

Again, we had a really good year last year. Went to the tournament, and a lot of it was because of the Aamir Simms and Clyde and Jonathan Baehre, our three seniors. Those three guys are going to be missed, but that opens up opportunities for other guys, and we're hopeful that those guys are ready to take a big step.