CLEMSON -- Last year was about Clemson basketball knowing early in the season exactly how good it could be, and rediscovering that sweet spot at money time.
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It wasn't unlike the 2016 national champion football team in that way -- a gifted, experienced team that Dabo Swinney has said spent that fall wanting to just hit fast-forward to its ultimate playoff destination and destiny.
Brad Brownell's 15th Clemson team operates in the shadow of his 14th, and that's not an easy place to be; the current group could achieve highly and still not duplicate last year's stirring run to the Elite Eight, and to a 13-point first-half advantage over Alabama before the tide turned dramatically to deny the Tigers their first ever Final Four trip.
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It's best not to get caught up in comparisons between this year and last year. Every team and season is so different for so many different reasons.
Yet it does seem reasonable to acknowledge perhaps the biggest difference in the big picture then and now as we evaluate the 17-4 Tigers (9-1 ACC) at the halfway point of their conference schedule.
Where late January and February 2024 was about Brownell trying to revive the focus and drive that marked November and December, now it feels like what happens from this point will be a story of development.
They need Viktor Lakhin to develop into a more consistent presence and less feast or famine.
They need Chauncey Wiggins to develop into a more all-around threat that uses his size to influence things closer to the basket.
They need the bench -- Dillon Hunter, Jake Heidbreder, Del Jones -- to bring a bit more pop.
And all that explains why last Saturday's performance at Virginia Tech was so uplifting.
The Tigers didn't just show they could win a game on the road with their stud on the bench with the flu for all but 10 minutes.
They also checked all the boxes listed above and showed encouraging signs of development that, if extended over the long term, will have this team playing its best basketball come March.
Entering the season, perhaps the most vital variable was Wiggins. If he could show the same improvement this year that Ian Schieffelin did last year, it was going to make this team hard to beat.
Wiggins has been up and down at times this season, but in Blacksburg he put together exactly the type of game Brownell has been telling him for years he's capable of.
In addition to the slick shooting from 3 (4-of-6), Wiggins was active around the rim and closed out defensive possessions with five rebounds.
Wiggins is averaging three rebounds a game, and that needs to be higher. But he's showing strong signs of being more of a presence on the boards, and that gets to the developmental theme we referenced earlier.
"He's obviously playing both the wing and the 4 spot for us this year, so he's naturally around the rim a little more this year than he has been in the past," Brownell said. "Earlier in his career he was primarily a 3-point jump shooter and perimeter player. One of the things I've always said about Chauncey that I really like about him is he's got a good basketball mind, and he wants to learn the game and he can learn multiple positions. He has learned multiple positions for a couple years now. This year he's had to guard 3s, 4s and 5s. He's played the 3, 4 and a little bit of the 5 on offense occasionally.
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"So just continuing to build his game closer to the basket on both ends -- rebounding, shot blocking, finishing at the rim, scoring in the low post. That's just something that he really didn't do before he came to Clemson. He had so much to learn at a young age and really didn't do as much of that as a young player here. But now this year he's been thrust into that role and he's ready for it. I would say pretty consistently he's starting to do more things around the basket area for us on both ends, and it's really helped our team."
Dillon Hunter has of course taken a big leap from last season. And of late, Heidbreder and Jones have shown plenty of comfort making plays within the structure of the offense.
Last year we learned early on just how good the Tigers could be, and the biggest question was whether they could rediscover it in March.
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This year it feels we learn a lot more about a developing team as it moves along.
It's a different story from last year, but still a fun one.
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