Alabama beats Clemson, Elite 8 updates, analysis

We see it all the time: One horrendous shooting night for an otherwise potent offense, and an exit from the NCAA Tournament. Saw it twice so far at Crytpo.com Arena, in fact, with Arizona and North Carolina.

Alabama is threatening to follow suit.

The Crimson Tide started 1-for-13 from 3-point range, and perhaps worse, 3-for-11 on layups. They're hanging around because Clemson isn't lighting it up offensively and probably never will. But analytically obsessed Nate Oats wants his team taking at-the-rim 2s and a bunch of 3s. What happens when none of them go in?

Mark Sears, an All-American who led the SEC in scoring this season, currently has no points, is 0-for-7 shooting, and 0-for-4 from 3.

Clemson has him in hell, and leads by 13.

LOS ANGELES — Alabama eight minutes in: shooting 4-for-16 overall, 1-for-8 from 3, and with forward Grant Nelson — the team’s third-leading scorer and star of its Sweet 16 win over North Carolina — tied to the bench with two personal fouls. And yet, the Tide only trails the Tigers by three at the under-eight media timeout, thanks to tripling Clemson up on the offensive boards and earning second-chance points.

LOS ANGELES — We’re off to a rousing start here, as Clemson comes out for its pregame warmups and … there are no balls for the Tigers to shoot around with. Joe Girard, first one out of the tunnel, shrugged as he scanned the court. An NCAA official did a fully-suited sprint with a rack of balls shortly thereafter, but, uh, that’s a pretty good representation of the “excitement” surrounding today’s Elite Eight game.

I think there are more Alabama fans here... but honestly, pretty impressed/surprised by the Clemson turnout.

Heard a few folks in my hotel lobby who said they flew in after the Tigers beat Arizona.

LOS ANGELES — When the West region was announced, it was full of (arguably) the best guards of any segment of this NCAA Tournament bracket: Arizona’s Caleb Love, the Pac-12 Player of the Year; North Carolina’s R.J. Davis, an All-American and the ACC Player of the Year; and Alabama’s Mark Sears, the SEC’s leading scorer who also is an All-American.

And yet, arguably the best guard in the West through three tournament games?

Clemson’s Chase Hunter.

Hunter, obviously, had the critical and-1 layup that cemented the Tigers’ Sweet 16 win over Arizona on Thursday. For that alone, for sending the program to its first Elite Eight since 1980, Hunter — the rare college player to spend five seasons at one school — will be a Clemson basketball icon forever.

But it’s far more than just that one late-game moment. Hunter turned in a dud of all duds in Clemson’s lone ACC tournament game, a loss to Boston College: two points on 0-for-10 shooting (!!), with two turnovers and two assists. Since then? He’s been on exactly the kind of heater a team like Clemson needs to make a run. In the Tigers’ three postseason games, he’s averaging 19.7 points, 5.7 assists, 4 rebounds, and 1.7 steals per game — and against the Wildcats in the Sweet 16, he was the best player on the floor.

“He's completely different,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said Friday. “I think he's much stronger both mentally and physically — and I think you see it in his play right now.”

P.J. Hall and Joe Girard get more of the headlines for these Tigers, but for Clemson to make the first Final Four in program history, it’s going to take another outstanding effort from Hunter — this time against Sears — at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday. The good news? Hunter played well against the Tide when these teams met in Tuscaloosa in late November: 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting, three 3s, and three rebounds in Clemson’s victory.

“To go to the Final Four, to make history for Clemson, that would be everything,” Hunter said. “But we still have to go play the game.”

LOS ANGELES — An hour and a half before an Elite Eight game, before history is guaranteed to be made by the winner, you can find your way into Crypto.com Arena for $32.

That’s the get-in price in StubHub. Spend $64? You’re in the lower level for Clemson-Alabama.

As cloying as it is that two football schools are on the cusp of their first Final Four in men’s basketball…they are still football schools, located thousands of miles away from this city. Not exactly an easy hop on short notice.

Hopping into a cab bound for the arena, the driver asked if I was headed for a hockey game. (He knew the Lakers were out of town.)

NCAA Tournament Elite Eight, I told him.

“Oh,” he said. “Who’s playing?”

Hot ticket, indeed.

LOS ANGELES — Before this season, Clemson coach Brad Brownell told his team he thought it was good enough to make the Final Four … despite that never having been done in school history. He’d only ever told one other team that: the 2018 group, which made his only other Sweet 16 appearance in 14 seasons at Clemson. “Our '18 team was good enough,” Brownell said Friday, the day before Clemson’s Elite Eight matchup vs. Alabama. “And if Donte Grantham didn't tear his ACL, we might have made it. But my guys understand because I'm real with them.”

That belief from Brownell was key to Clemson’s 9-0 start this season, in one of the better nonconference showings of any team in the country. The Tigers beat four eventual tournament teams in that stretch: UAB, South Carolina, TCU … and, ironically, Alabama.

But then Brownell sensed a shift with his team, entering the new year. And he wasn’t happy about it.

“They were a little full of themselves,” he said. “They weren't listening and being quite as coachable as they maybe should be at times.”

Which made what happened next somewhat predictable: losses in four of five games to start the new year, undoing all the accrued goodwill. “Quite frankly,” Brownell added, “we got smacked in the mouth a few times.” After one particular 4-6 stretch in league play, Brownell sensing a potentially special season slipping away, he had to be brutally honest with his players. If we go 4-6 down the stretch, we will not make the tournament.

Did anyone want that?

“They know when I'm upset. They know it's straight talk,” Brownell said. “And so I think they understood that and it hit home that, man, Coach thinks we'll really good — but we're blowing this opportunity.”

The Tigers did limp down the stretch, losing two of their final three regular-season games and their only ACC tournament contest, versus Boston College, but they’d done enough to get in. A road win at North Carolina on Feb. 6, days after the Tar Heels beat rival Duke, especially quelled any uncertainty about Clemson’s postseason fate going into the final month of the season. And now, here Clemson is, right where Brownell told his players they could be all along.

“When I think that we play the right way and play at a high level, we can play with just about anybody in the country,” Brownell said. “We've proven that — and we're certainly going to have to do it (today) to win.”

LOS ANGELES — Predictably, after an NCAA Tournament breakthrough game featuring all the big offensive and defensive plays Alabama needed down the stretch, the good vibes poured in from more than 1,800 miles to the northeast.

“A lot of love coming from Devils Lake and North Dakota as a whole,” Grant Nelson said Friday, “which is amazing.”

This was what the Crimson Tide imagined when they plucked the 6-foot-10 multi-skilled big man out of the transfer portal, following three seasons at North Dakota State: A 24-point, 12-rebound, five-block effort that helped vault the team past No. 1 seed North Carolina and put it one game away from a first-ever Final Four.

The previous two games? Not what anyone had in mind. Nelson had six points and two rebounds, total, across first- and second-round games in Spokane, Wash. And knew he had to atone. Alabama held a voluntary shooting session earlier in the week, and three players showed up. One was Grant Nelson. “Grant Nelson deserves to play well,” Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats said. “He works hard. He's been all about the right stuff all year. Even when he struggled he just stays with it, stays with it.”

He’s the third-leading scorer for Alabama (11.8 points per game for the season) and doesn’t necessarily have to be the engine for an Elite Eight win over Clemson on Saturday night. But given that the Tigers are happy to work inside-out with star big man P.J. Hall, and given that Hall has a propensity for foul trouble, a little pressure applied from Nelson would be a massive boost.

“He showed (Thursday) he could shoot the 3 off the dribble, off the catch, he can take it in the post,” Alabama guard Aaron Estrada said. “For us and our offense it kind of just opens it up for everybody else, especially when he gets going, because we have so many great shooters on our team. If they did start doubling or helping or whatever they wanted to do, we have a counter for it in every aspect.”

Follow along here for updates from Boston, where Connecticut and Illinois are nearing tipoff in the East Regional final.

Yes. But Clemson would become just the fourth No. 6 seed to reach a Final Four in the men's NCAA Tournament since it expanded to 64 teams in 1985 — and the first since 1992.

The Tigers would join the 1992 Michigan Wolverines, the 1988 Kansas Jayhawks and the 1987 Providence Friars in that group. The KU team — "Danny and the Miracles" — won the national championship.

Before tournament expansion, Jim Valvano and NC State won the title in 1983 as a No. 6 seed.

LOS ANGELES — Once again, it’s Alabama vs. Clemson in the College Football Pla …

Oh, wait. Take two: it’s Alabama vs. Clemson in the Elite Eight — two traditional football powerhouses instead meeting on the cusp of hoops history. Combined, the two schools have accounted for five of the last nine national college football championships … but in men’s basketball? They’ve got one prior Elite Eight appearance each: Alabama 20 years ago, and Clemson even farther back, in 1980.

But more importantly, as it pertains to Saturday’s matchup?

Neither has ever made the Final Four.

“Alabama and Clemson playing in LA, most people would think we’re out here playing in the Rose Bowl,” Alabama coach Nate Oats joked Friday. “The basketball Rose Bowl.”

It is an impossible comparison to ignore. Consider this: NBA analyst Charles Barkley picked Arizona to win the national title, but in congratulating Clemson on national television Thursday for its Sweet 16 win over the Wildcats, the coach he shouted out was … Dabo Swinney, Clemson’s football coach. None of the other handsomely-paid analysts on the TNT set flinched.

“The first thing you better realize — I’m sure Nate feels the same way — if you’re the head basketball coach at Clemson or Alabama, you’re not going to become a basketball school,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “You’re going to be a football school. You better embrace that early on.”

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It used to be that an elite defense was a requirement for success in college basketball. But this year, more teams have ridden their offenses to strong results. Four teams (Illinois, Alabama, Baylor and Kentucky) earned top-four seeds in the NCAA Tournament with offenses ranked among the nation’s top 10 and defenses outside the top 68. While Baylor and Kentucky have been eliminated, Illinois (second in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency, 84th on defense) and Alabama (fourth, 102nd) have reached the Elite Eight. And their success is part of an overall trend toward more scoring in college basketball.

The reasons behind this shift, though, are layered and somewhat counterintuitive. College basketball is in the midst of a dramatic change. Rosters have gotten older for a pair of reasons: The NCAA granted players an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID season and players earned the right to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL), which has enticed some to stay in school longer. At the same time, the transfer portal has created a system of annual free agency, with teams going through massive roster overhauls each offseason.

In other words, college basketball may be older, but teams are also less cohesive. And coaches say those factors have helped offense and hurt defense. Mike Rhoades saw it firsthand in his initial season as Penn State’s head coach. Not only was he new to Happy Valley, but so were nine of his top 11 players, including transfers from six different schools.

“When you’re a junior and a senior, you’re a better defensive player than when you’re a freshman or a sophomore,” Rhoades said. “We have all these transfers, and they are like freshmen and sophomores learning a new defensive system. The offensive side of the ball is a little bit easier for guys in the sense that they just have experience under their belt and most guys are being recruited out of the portal because of their offense, not their defense.”

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Our staff picks for No. 4 Alabama versus No. 6 Clemson:

• Nicole Auerbach: Clemson
• Tobias Bass: Alabama
• John Hollinger: Alabama
• Brendan Marks: Alabama
• Austin Mock: Alabama
• Joe Rexrode: Alabama