Clemson
(2005-06 season: 7-9 ACC, 19-13 overall; lost in second round of the NIT to Louisville 74-68)

When Clemson played its Orange-White scrimmage last month, Vernon Hamilton glanced over at the bench at one point and saw a sight that pleased him very much. James Mays, Clemson’s 6-9 junior, was back in uniform for the Tigers.

“It’s kind of like a breath of fresh air looking over there seeing him,” Hamilton said of Mays.

Clemson coach Oliver Purnell probably felt much the same as his point guard. Mays was part of a Clemson basketball program that opened last season 11-0. He scored 9.2 points per game and 7.6 rebounds as a starter in those 11 games. Teaming with Akin Akingbala, Mays gave Clemson a solid frontcourt to go with one of the better backcourts in the ACC. The Tigers were starting to look like 2005-06 might be their year, but then Mays was declared academically ineligible and, from that point forward, things went south for Clemson basketball.

But Mays is back in school now and on the team, giving Tiger fans a sense of hope as the season approaches.

“He’s a little more versatile … we can move him out, we can move him in,” Purnell said of Mays. “You do have to have an experienced guy up there to match up with the rest of the league. And he can also be a leader for the young guys in our program because we’re going to have to have contributions from them because we need depth to play defensively the way we want to, we need depth to play as hard as we want to to win in this league. So Mays is very important for a lot of reasons.”

Cliff Hammonds roomed with Mays over the summer and was impressed with his work habits both on the court and in the weight room. Hammonds has played with a couple of other talented big men – Sharrod Ford and Akingbala - in his time at Clemson, and thinks Mays can contribute just as much to the team as those two did.

“I think James Mays is going to replace what Akin did,” Hammond said. “But my question is who is going to do what James Mays did for us the first 11 games of last year.”

That’s a good question. The backcourt is in the very capable hands of Hammonds (10.1 points and 3.3 assists per game) and Hamilton (12 points and 3 assists per game and an ACC-best 83 steals on the season), but some players need to step up in the frontcourt if Clemson is to take steps forward this season.

Among those who may contribute in that role are sophomores Raymond Sykes and Julius Powell and junior Sam Perry. Or perhaps freshman Trevor Booker, one of the top recruits out of the state of South Carolina, may have an immediate impact.

“I like him an awful lot,” Purnell said. “He’s shown (in practice) he has the ability to rebound at this level and he’s physically strong enough to play at this level.”

Purnell would also like to find some players who can make foul shots. Free-throw shooting plagued this team last year as Clemson finished last in the ACC by making just 61.7 percent of their shots from the foul line.

“We just continue to work on it,” Purnell said. “We improved an awful lot in the second half of league play last year because we, obviously, worked on it. We didn’t run from it. We talked about it, we did some different things drill-wise to put our guys in pressure situations. We’ve continued to do that in preseason.”

After two trips to the NIT the last two seasons, Purnell, as well as others around the program, want more this season.

“We expect to be better, we expect to go to the NCAA Tournament,” Purnell said. “To me, that’s a nice thing. When we got to Clemson we felt like we had to change our image, externally and internally we had to change the expectation level. That’s slowly, but surely, happening.”