Clemson named No. 2 seed in 2017 NIT tournament

Tony Crumpton by Assoc. Editor -

The Clemson Basketball team was included in the 2017 NIT tournament as it was announced on Sunday evening. #2 seed Clemson (17-15) will face #7 seed Oakland (24-8) in the first round of the NIT at Clemson on Tuesday, 8 ET on ESPNU. The Golden Grizzlies won their regular season Horizon championship but came up short in their tournament against Youngstown St with a 81-80 loss. Clemson's ACC tournament ended last Wednesday with a 79-72 loss against Duke at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

“Our guys have played good basketball, and we’re excited to have the opportunity to keep playing," Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. "We hope our fans will continue to support our team like they have all season. Oakland has a really good team and won the Horizon League regular season title. Greg Kampe is an outstanding head coach and brought a good team to Clemson two years ago. It won’t be any different this time around, so we expect a good game Tuesday in

An amazing stat is that the Tigers are 12-0 at home in the NIT since 1982 according to Clemson SID Tim Bourret. However, this would be the sixth year in a row that the Tigers did not make the more prestigious NCAA tournament.

The automatic bids from regular season conference champions for the NIT tournament went to Akron, Belmont, CSU Bakersfield, Illinois St., Monmouth, Oakland, South Dakota, UC Irvine, UNC Greensboro, and UT-Arlington.

The four No. 1 seeds in the tournament went to California, Illinois St., Iowa, and Syracuse. Ohio State and UNC-Asheville were the last two schools that didn't make the NIT.

A total of three ACC schools were included in the NIT with #1 seed Syracuse, #2 seed Clemson, and #6 seed Georgia Tech.