Brownell brings closure
posted by LW, Wednesday, April 14, 2010
If you’re a Clemson fan and you witnessed Brad Brownell’s introductory press conference in person or through other means, the guess here is that you walked away thinking all is right with the Tigers’ basketball world for now.
The point of this is not to say that by "winning" the press conference (whatever that means) Brownell is destined to guide Clemson even higher than Oliver Purnell managed to in seven years here. No one knows whether that’ll happen, particularly with a coach who’s about to make his first foray into the world of big-boy basketball.
But there was something cathartic about Tuesday afternoon’s events inside the McFadden Building. The way the 41-year-old Brownell carried himself and carried the moment, with a blend of confidence and command and genuine excitement, seemed to apply a salve to the open wounds left from Purnell’s departure.
Purnell was a classy guy. And no one from around these parts should hold any grudges against him for moving on to attempt resuscitating another sagging team.
But there was just something about his departure that was tough to resolve for fans who truly invested themselves in his basketball program.
Maybe it was because it came out of nowhere, in the middle of the night and just days after Purnell seemed totally committed to being here for some time to come. Just hours after you hear of it and are still trying to process the shock, you see Purnell at his introductory press conference in Chicago wearing a DePaul hat and standing beside some furry, weird-looking mascot.
Maybe it was because we’d grown comfortable with the idea that Purnell and his wife, who’d become likable fixtures in the community, liked it here and would ultimately retire here.
Maybe it was because he went to DePaul. Not the DePaul that was really good once upon a time, but the DePaul that has been really bad for quite some time. If he left for, say, Maryland, it’s a much different story and you're able to move on much more quickly.
Or maybe it was because he left assistant coaches and players in the dark as he neared his decision, and then waited more than 40 hours before addressing them in person and explaining why he left.
Understand that these slights, if we want to call them that, don’t paint Purnell in nearly as unfavorable light as Rick Barnes upon his departure from Clemson in 1998.
Purnell methodically built something over a seven-year period and departed on good terms. Barnes stayed for four years, won a lot of games and hearts, then broke those hearts when he left for Texas while talking smack about South Carolina’s public schools.
Twelve years later, simply hearing the name Rick Barnes still elicits smoke from some fans' ears. Merely eight days after Purnell’s departure, it’s hard for anyone to muster much dislike for the man.
But there was still some pain left from Purnell’s decision, and that pain was rooted in the inescapable realization that Purnell just didn’t want to be here.
Yeah, he and his wife liked it here and all. And he said a lot of nice things about Clemson, its administration and its fans last week when we talked with him following his awkward meeting with his (former) team.
But even despite a reported offer of $2.2 million a year, despite the chance to dip into that deep Chicago talent pool, despite some cumulative frustrations from dealing with the Clemson administration, you thought it’d take more to lure Purnell from a place he supposedly loved. Again … DePaul.
All those misgivings, so difficult to reconcile over the last week, seem washed away now.
Brownell’s press conference didn’t tell us that he’s the next great coach, or that he’ll start bringing ACC titles to Clemson in short order.
We do not know whether the man will flourish or fizzle under circumstances he’s never experienced.
But we know the man wants to be here -- loves to be here.
And that’s enough for now.
...
Well the blog has been on hiatus for the better part of the past week. Our world was turned upside-down with the news that Purnell was gone. The fairly predictable rhythms of the daily grind turned into an all-consuming roller-coaster that was impossible to predict.
So many people helped us on this, even those offering small tidbits that we were able to use to piece together something much larger. You know who you are.
Cris and I would like to thank Brett Jensen for his help on this. Once upon a time, Jensen lived in the Clemson area and covered the Tigers. He's now a radio personality in Charlotte, but he was ready to put on his reporting shoes and pitch in when we were in a pinch. Some of the legwork he did through this process was vital.
We also want to thank you guys for your patience through this thing. Though we were far ahead of anyone else in our coverage of this coaching search, there was a period where we honestly did not know what was going on. That period stretched from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, when the news broke that Mississippi State's Rick Stansbury had received an offer after interviewing in Atlanta on Saturday night.
The common speculation was that the mystery man was Baylor's Scott Drew, or maybe Oklahoma's Jeff Capel. But we didn't have nearly enough hard information to confirm it, and we didn't have any problem telling you guys that we were in the dark. It's much, much better to be late and accurate than first and wrong, and we appreciate y'all understanding why we didn't simply react to what others were writing and jump on the Drew/Capel train.
Now on to some links...
Excellent piece here by Jim Young of The ACC Sports Journal on how you gauge a coaching hire.
Early on Tuesday, when the news broke that Clemson had hired Brad Brownell as its new basketball coach, a friend of mine in the media had an emphatic response.
“Great hire. He’ll be perfect for Clemson,” he said.
This came on the heels of several days of monitoring the anger, confusion and bewilderment Wake Forest fans have been expressing once the news broke that Ron Wellman planned to make Jeff Bzdelik his new coach.
Boston College fans have had a little longer to get used to the idea that Steve Donahue is the Eagles’ new coach. Judging by the tweets, emails and message boards posts I’ve been seeing, the reaction appears mixed.
Who’s right? None of them. Or maybe all of them.
That’s the thing about coaching hires. In the vast majority of cases it’s impossible to immediately know whether a school has brought in the right guy for the job.
Bart Wright of The Greenville News pretty much nails the difference in personalities between BB and OP.
Where Purnell was reserved and process-centered, Brownell is up-front passionate, loaded with emotion and energy, and you got the feeling he’d pull and level or push any coaching button to win, even it means – gasp – playing zone defense when the situations dictates.
Good stuff from The State's Ron Morris, who provides more details into Brownell's life story.
Brownell grew up in Evansville, Ind., and can recite the roster of Indiana's national championship teams of 1976, '81 and '87. He seldom attended Indiana games because he was busy assisting his father, Bob, who first coached at Evansville Day School and then at Castle High School.
Brownell attended his father's practices from the age of 5 and later kept statistics and tagged along on scouting trips.
While playing at Harrison High in Evansville, Brownell began to realize his future might be in coaching. Among his teammates was Calbert Cheaney, who clearly was a Division I prospect and became a star at Indiana.
After spending a year to recruit his future wife, Paula, at Purdue, Brownell transferred to DePauw University, where he played for three years and began charting his coaching career.
His coach at DePauw, Royce Walton, was a disciple of Indiana basketball under Bob Knight, as was Jim Crews, the coach at Evansville when Brownell was an assistant there.
So, naturally, Brownell's coaching style centers on man-to-man defense and the motion offense, two Knight staples. Then, in eight seasons as an assistant coach at UNC Wilmington under Jerry Wainwright, Brownell said he learned how to build and run a program.
Looks like Stansbury is getting rewarded for turning down Clemson and staying in Starkvegas.
Greg Wallace says Brownell's real work starts now: building relationships with current Tigers and recruits.
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
If you’re a Clemson fan and you witnessed Brad Brownell’s introductory press conference in person or through other means, the guess here is that you walked away thinking all is right with the Tigers’ basketball world for now.
The point of this is not to say that by "winning" the press conference (whatever that means) Brownell is destined to guide Clemson even higher than Oliver Purnell managed to in seven years here. No one knows whether that’ll happen, particularly with a coach who’s about to make his first foray into the world of big-boy basketball.
But there was something cathartic about Tuesday afternoon’s events inside the McFadden Building. The way the 41-year-old Brownell carried himself and carried the moment, with a blend of confidence and command and genuine excitement, seemed to apply a salve to the open wounds left from Purnell’s departure.
Purnell was a classy guy. And no one from around these parts should hold any grudges against him for moving on to attempt resuscitating another sagging team.
But there was just something about his departure that was tough to resolve for fans who truly invested themselves in his basketball program.
Maybe it was because it came out of nowhere, in the middle of the night and just days after Purnell seemed totally committed to being here for some time to come. Just hours after you hear of it and are still trying to process the shock, you see Purnell at his introductory press conference in Chicago wearing a DePaul hat and standing beside some furry, weird-looking mascot.
Maybe it was because we’d grown comfortable with the idea that Purnell and his wife, who’d become likable fixtures in the community, liked it here and would ultimately retire here.
Maybe it was because he went to DePaul. Not the DePaul that was really good once upon a time, but the DePaul that has been really bad for quite some time. If he left for, say, Maryland, it’s a much different story and you're able to move on much more quickly.
Or maybe it was because he left assistant coaches and players in the dark as he neared his decision, and then waited more than 40 hours before addressing them in person and explaining why he left.
Understand that these slights, if we want to call them that, don’t paint Purnell in nearly as unfavorable light as Rick Barnes upon his departure from Clemson in 1998.
Purnell methodically built something over a seven-year period and departed on good terms. Barnes stayed for four years, won a lot of games and hearts, then broke those hearts when he left for Texas while talking smack about South Carolina’s public schools.
Twelve years later, simply hearing the name Rick Barnes still elicits smoke from some fans' ears. Merely eight days after Purnell’s departure, it’s hard for anyone to muster much dislike for the man.
But there was still some pain left from Purnell’s decision, and that pain was rooted in the inescapable realization that Purnell just didn’t want to be here.
Yeah, he and his wife liked it here and all. And he said a lot of nice things about Clemson, its administration and its fans last week when we talked with him following his awkward meeting with his (former) team.
But even despite a reported offer of $2.2 million a year, despite the chance to dip into that deep Chicago talent pool, despite some cumulative frustrations from dealing with the Clemson administration, you thought it’d take more to lure Purnell from a place he supposedly loved. Again … DePaul.
All those misgivings, so difficult to reconcile over the last week, seem washed away now.
Brownell’s press conference didn’t tell us that he’s the next great coach, or that he’ll start bringing ACC titles to Clemson in short order.
We do not know whether the man will flourish or fizzle under circumstances he’s never experienced.
But we know the man wants to be here -- loves to be here.
And that’s enough for now.
...
Well the blog has been on hiatus for the better part of the past week. Our world was turned upside-down with the news that Purnell was gone. The fairly predictable rhythms of the daily grind turned into an all-consuming roller-coaster that was impossible to predict.
So many people helped us on this, even those offering small tidbits that we were able to use to piece together something much larger. You know who you are.
Cris and I would like to thank Brett Jensen for his help on this. Once upon a time, Jensen lived in the Clemson area and covered the Tigers. He's now a radio personality in Charlotte, but he was ready to put on his reporting shoes and pitch in when we were in a pinch. Some of the legwork he did through this process was vital.
We also want to thank you guys for your patience through this thing. Though we were far ahead of anyone else in our coverage of this coaching search, there was a period where we honestly did not know what was going on. That period stretched from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, when the news broke that Mississippi State's Rick Stansbury had received an offer after interviewing in Atlanta on Saturday night.
The common speculation was that the mystery man was Baylor's Scott Drew, or maybe Oklahoma's Jeff Capel. But we didn't have nearly enough hard information to confirm it, and we didn't have any problem telling you guys that we were in the dark. It's much, much better to be late and accurate than first and wrong, and we appreciate y'all understanding why we didn't simply react to what others were writing and jump on the Drew/Capel train.
Now on to some links...
Excellent piece here by Jim Young of The ACC Sports Journal on how you gauge a coaching hire.
Early on Tuesday, when the news broke that Clemson had hired Brad Brownell as its new basketball coach, a friend of mine in the media had an emphatic response.
“Great hire. He’ll be perfect for Clemson,” he said.
This came on the heels of several days of monitoring the anger, confusion and bewilderment Wake Forest fans have been expressing once the news broke that Ron Wellman planned to make Jeff Bzdelik his new coach.
Boston College fans have had a little longer to get used to the idea that Steve Donahue is the Eagles’ new coach. Judging by the tweets, emails and message boards posts I’ve been seeing, the reaction appears mixed.
Who’s right? None of them. Or maybe all of them.
That’s the thing about coaching hires. In the vast majority of cases it’s impossible to immediately know whether a school has brought in the right guy for the job.
Bart Wright of The Greenville News pretty much nails the difference in personalities between BB and OP.
Where Purnell was reserved and process-centered, Brownell is up-front passionate, loaded with emotion and energy, and you got the feeling he’d pull and level or push any coaching button to win, even it means – gasp – playing zone defense when the situations dictates.
Good stuff from The State's Ron Morris, who provides more details into Brownell's life story.
Brownell grew up in Evansville, Ind., and can recite the roster of Indiana's national championship teams of 1976, '81 and '87. He seldom attended Indiana games because he was busy assisting his father, Bob, who first coached at Evansville Day School and then at Castle High School.
Brownell attended his father's practices from the age of 5 and later kept statistics and tagged along on scouting trips.
While playing at Harrison High in Evansville, Brownell began to realize his future might be in coaching. Among his teammates was Calbert Cheaney, who clearly was a Division I prospect and became a star at Indiana.
After spending a year to recruit his future wife, Paula, at Purdue, Brownell transferred to DePauw University, where he played for three years and began charting his coaching career.
His coach at DePauw, Royce Walton, was a disciple of Indiana basketball under Bob Knight, as was Jim Crews, the coach at Evansville when Brownell was an assistant there.
So, naturally, Brownell's coaching style centers on man-to-man defense and the motion offense, two Knight staples. Then, in eight seasons as an assistant coach at UNC Wilmington under Jerry Wainwright, Brownell said he learned how to build and run a program.
Looks like Stansbury is getting rewarded for turning down Clemson and staying in Starkvegas.
Greg Wallace says Brownell's real work starts now: building relationships with current Tigers and recruits.
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
Donnie Patterson. Donnie Patterson is the founder of Patterson Tax Service, located in Easley, S.C. He has been active in tax preparation since 1970, and offers a full range of tax and bookkeeping services.
Larry Williams. Larry has covered the daily beat at Clemson since 2004. Williams, who worked for the Charleston Post & Courier from 2004-08, joined Tigerillustrated.com in November of 2008. He may be reached by email at ldubya08(at)gmail.com. Replace (at) with @.