CLEMSON -- Two highly successful football coaches took in last night's basketball victory over Notre Dame at Littlejohn Coliseum.
Dabo Swinney was of course highly recognizable. The guy sitting to his right, Mike Houston, decidedly less so simply because his road (East Carolina, James Madison, The Citadel) hasn't really intersected much with Clemson's.
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Numbers alone tell the story of the immense success in Brad Brownell's 15th season -- 23 wins overall, and a 15-2 record in ACC play with 13 of those conference victories by double digits.
Remarkable on its face, particularly after the loss of the figures who were so foundational to last year's Elite Eight run.
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Yet there's something beyond the victories and the points that you have to see to fully appreciate.
And the beauty of it is that we can all see it just as well as Swinney and Houston did last night.
Who's to know what the precise formula is going to look like moving forward as coaches, regardless of sport, try to find the ideal balance between the homegrown and the transfer portal.
We've already written extensively about the revelation brought by Brownell that, yes, the right type of transfer can be such a perfect fit to your culture that he looks like he's been in the program for years.
But there's a vital element to the homegrown guys, too. And that was once again on full display as Ian Schieffelin, who arrived here as an obscurity in 2021, overwhelmed everyone else by sheer force of his presence, his drive and his all-consuming competitiveness.
There's a No. 5 jersey hanging in the rafters, the highest Clemson honor for Jaron Blossomgame.
Blossomgame did a lot of impressive things while at Clemson from 2012-17. We're not saying his jersey doesn't deserve to hang in Littlejohn.
But as we recall his decision to return for a final season in 2016-17, there's a distinct difference in how he approached his final tour compared to how Schieffelin and fellow veteran Chase Hunter have approached theirs.
(And "approached" seems like much too tame a term. More like "devoured.")
That 2016-17 team finished 17-16 overall and 6-12 in the ACC, and the final loss was at home to Oakland in the first round of the NIT.
Blossomgame wasn't the only reason that team didn't reach expectations, but people who were on that team recall him being more preoccupied with the individual over the collective as he tried to enhance his NBA stock.
It wasn't a grave offense, but his head was just sort of full of stuff that year. It happens, particularly to college kids.
We should note this was before the pay-for-play era.
Schieffelin and Hunter are getting paid a lot of money. Certainly Clemson had to make it worth their while to come back.
Getting paid is great, sure. But what Schieffelin and Hunter are providing goes so far beyond the transactional. Both are consummate competitors, consummately driven by following through on what last year's team (also led by consummate competitors, by the way) so narrowly missed.
They didn't come back to get paid. They didn't come back to iron out something the NBA told them was lacking. They came back to own this season, and this isn't something that's adequately illustrated with numbers.
You know it when you see it. And Swinney will start learning more about the makeup of his team when the Tigers begin spring practice Friday afternoon.
The football program scored big on retention when a long list of important players chose to remain.
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And yes, those players were compensated handsomely for it.
Did they come back for the right reasons?
There's a lot of reason to think they did, that their taste of the playoff last December will drive them to push through and achieve even more in 2025.
If they do, Clemson will boast two pristine examples of the lesson everyone saw last night against Notre Dame.
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It's always been about finding players, but also finding the right people.
Hard to imagine that changing amid tumultuous change in college athletics.
You know it when you see it. And seeing is believing at Clemson based on the most recent evidence.
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