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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 16, 2013Brad BrownellCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA JEFF FISCHEL: We have Brad Brownell, head coach of the Clemson Tigers. Looking ahead to the season, let's look at what you have. You lost a big man up front, but you still have some experience. Break down the team and the five you'll have on the floor. COACH BROWNELL: I don't know if I can give you a starting lineup. Certainly feel good about K.J. McDaniels. Worked hard the last couple years to make himself into a high‑level player, terrific athlete, improved shooter, driver. Jordan Roper, who came with us today, is a guy who played very well for us in Italy. Had a good freshman year. Can shoot the ball from three, very quick. A guy who is kind of going back and forth between a one and a two. It's Landry Nnoko inside is a guy who is slowly emerging as our starting center right now. He's 6'10", 245. A little inexperienced. Sophomore. Guy who defends pretty well for his position. I feel good about him. Then we have a bunch of others, Damarcus Harrison, Adonis Filer. Rod Hall is a guy who started a bunch for us last year at point guard, is a very seasoned player in terms of experience, a glue guy that makes other people better. We have a little bit of experience in the backcourt, very young in the front court. There's a physicality that you're going to face at this level that you don't see until you actually get to the heart of the ACC night in, night out when you're playing big, strong, athletic players in the front court. Landry Nnoko, Josh Smith is another sophomore that didn't play a lot more, but at 6'8", 250, has the size physically to bang around in there. We signed a post player, Ibrahim Djambo, 210, 215, a little thin, but a guy we feel good about. Face‑up, stretch four, a little like Milton Jennings, can shoot threes, just needs some experience. We'll see how it all shakes out during the course of the fall here, as we assemble our team for our first game in November. JEFF FISCHEL: Questions. Q. Who are you looking for this year to be your leaders on the team? COACH BROWNELL: Probably our junior class. K.J. McDaniel, Rod Hall are the two guys that come to mind. K.J. in my mind is an encourager, a guy that is very supportive of his teammates, tries to make people feel good. Very supportive. Rod is a little bit quieter, but a guy who leads by example. Trying to become more vocal. Certainly a tough‑minded, physical player that has the respect of our team because of his unselfishness, his smarts, his ability to just grind things out, tough things out. I think those two guys are probably the guys who are most likely to be considered leaders in our program. JEFF FISCHEL: You did a great job defensively last year possession after possession. Have you seen that from this team this year? COACH BROWNELL: Certainly I'm concerned with defending the paint and rebounding. When we had two older players in there in Devin and Milt, Devin was a very good rebounder in traffic. He was a guy who could get tough rebounds for you against physical players. Those guys did a good job that way. I was proud of the way we defended last year. I thought we defended at a pretty high level. Just didn't shoot the ball well enough. Whether we can defend at the same level, I don't know. I'm optimistic we can. I think the rebounding is a little bit of a cause for concern right now. JEFF FISCHEL: Offensively where have you seen the most development? COACH BROWNELL: Well, the thing that excites me the most, I think we'll be a better shooting team. We'll make more perimeter shots. We didn't shoot the ball well last year, we didn't shoot free throws well. We put a lot of time in, done extra shooting. We're still doing it. It's what we're going to have to do to be successful this year. We're going to have to make more shots. We have Devin Coleman that can shoot the ball, that will be very encouraging. Some other guys, Damarcus Harrison is an improving shooter. If those guys are a little more relaxed, comfortable as older players, shoot the ball a little bit better, that's the best way we have an opportunity to improve our offense. Q. Can you talk about how tough this league is. COACH BROWNELL: This is going to be a great challenge. The teams that we brought in are great programs, they're not just good teams. Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pitt aren't just good every once in a while, they're good every year. They have established basketball programs with great coaches and they're at schools that are committed to it. They're committed to basketball. They put money into it. Their fans support it. It's important to them. They're good every year. When you add that with the kind of programs we already have here, it makes for a lot of excitement. It makes this what we all think is the best league in college basketball. You have to be prepared. I'm very excited about it now. When I'm in the middle of five games out of six on the road, I might not be as excited at some point. The great thing this league does now it affords you the opportunity to beat top‑25 teams every week. You're going to have an opportunity to improve your résumé, to get big wins, to have great teams come into your building and play, exciting games for your fans basically from January to March. JEFF FISCHEL: The lifeblood for a program is recruiting. What impact does the new ACC have on that? COACH BROWNELL: I think it's positive. I'm a Midwest guy, grew up in Indiana. We've made a conscious effort to recruit the Midwest in the last 18 months or so. I think the opportunity of having Notre Dame and Louisville and Pittsburgh from that area has opened some kids' eyes to the idea of maybe playing elsewhere. Certainly add Syracuse to the mix, you can talk about northeastern schools. Kids want to challenge themselves against the best. They have an understanding of what's happening in this league. If you can be successful here, you can be successful anywhere. JEFF FISCHEL: We talked about K.J. a bit. You can't really teach shot blocking. COACH BROWNELL: None of that came from the coaches. He did that all on his own. He's a highlight reel waiting to happen all the time. He's been on the ESPN more on the top 10 list. He's a great leaper, incredible offensive rebounder, runs the floor in transition, blocks shots. What he does you can't coach. He just does it naturally. He's a great physical athlete that's improving his basketball. That's the thing that excites me the most, is his ability to do other things on the basketball court. Our fans are spoiled with that guy. He provides entertainment all night every night. JEFF FISCHEL: The way you measure the success of this team this year, how are you going to do that. COACH BROWNELL: I don't know. Everybody is going to look at wins and losses. I need to see how this team grows, how we handle adversity, what individual players on our team make, what kind of strides they make, what kind of identity we begin to develop. This is a group that could be together for a couple years. You want to begin to lay the groundwork with this group for some things that are going to help you in the next couple of years. I'm going to see how we handle a lot of different things. We haven't talked about a lot of specific goals with our team. We're just trying to work hard, develop a strong identity and a bond together that's going to allow us to be successful moving forward. JEFF FISCHEL: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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