Butler confident in veteran ‘Team 49’ ahead of season opener

Amanda Butler and her Tigers get their season going at 11 am Monday versus Winthrop. (Photo: Ken Ruinard / USATODAY)

by Nikki Hood - Staff Writer - Mon Nov 06 07:30:04 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – As Team 49 prepares to tip off the 2023 basketball season Monday morning (vs. Winthrop, 11 a.m., ACCNX) confidence and optimism have never been higher inside the confines of Littlejohn Coliseum.

For really the first time in head coach Amanda Butler’s six seasons at Clemson, she has an older, experienced team under her tutelage with just three freshmen or sophomores on the roster.

Having a more mature team allows Butler to coach a little differently and lends itself to having more of a player-led team.

“Well, it's really created for me, a different dynamic in practice, too, where from the beginning, we can all look at each other and I go, ‘we're veterans.’ What does that mean? What should that look like? What should that sound like? What should practice feel like? What should decision-making in the locker room before we hit the floor look like? There really should be a maturity about the way that we prepare,” Butler told TigerNet during an exclusive interview. “There should be a maturity and a knowingness in the way that we compete. If we bring our best, this is what we can expect. If we don't, we know what that's going to look like. We've lived it already as freshmen or sophomores or juniors. It really allows us to apply a different type of pressure in practice, the ownership and accountability for you're an experienced group. We have got two true freshmen and one sophomore on this team, and all the rest of you have been in college for multiple years playing Division 1 basketball at a high level. There's always a lot of teaching and communicating and trying to generate clarity, but then there's also a lot of opportunity to just say to them, ‘What do we want this to be like?’

“And then to have an informed answer. What does this practice need to be like today, guys? And them to already know what the answer is to that, as opposed to like, Well, we're not sure. Tell us what to do. They can be captains of their own ship in a lot of regards. It's very exciting. It is a very unique combination of talent, of personalities, of experiences. We have a lot of juniors and fifth-year players. We have no true four-year seniors, which is also odd, but here we are. This is what we're going through right now. We need to call on all parts of that. If you're a fifth-year person, you know you're doing this for the last year, whether it's your fifth year at Clemson or whether you're Danielle Rauch and you thought your coaching career had begun and you knew you had another year of eligibility and you made the commitment to do it and to be here. What do you want that to look like? Then, we put it all together collectively. What do we think we can do?

“Then what do we need every day to look like to achieve what we think we can collectively do? I've never been in a position like this, but I'm excited about it. I'm excited to coach a veteran team. Although it's veteran, there's a lot of newness, but there's a hunger. There's a motor about this team. They compete really, really hard, and that's fun.”

The 2022 squad finished with an appearance in the WNIT Super 16, allowing them to play well into March, an experience Butler said she thinks will pay dividends.

“People don't understand basketball people, fans, anyone, the difference in playing in late February versus late March, playing in late March and the level of focus,” Butler said. “You've been playing games now since the beginning of November. You've been practicing since September. It's really hard to sustain focus and intensity for that amount of time and then to say, ‘Okay, we know that this has been going for this amount of time. Now, bring your very best right now when this has been happening month after month after month’. So until you experience it, you also intellectually understand it, but from that standpoint of practically, what does my body feel like in mid-March, late March? How do I bring my best at that point, even though I am tired and maybe I'm bored with practice at that point? Those are real things. So, going through it and having people who are in leadership roles on our team like Amari to be able to prepare us to not just be there again next year, but to hopefully be in a better position in late March and hopefully in the NCA tournament. I think it was a huge step forward for our program and probably necessary for us to have the stage set, if you will, for what we think we can do this year.”

Team 49 began building toward the 2023 campaign with a summer trip to Greece, where Butler said she learned a lot about her team.

“Huge, for sure. Chemistry, just the discovery process, having a competitive space where you get to experiment a little bit,” she said. “Then, you get to experiment on some of the chemistry fronts with roommates, and you get to observe a little bit who ends up, when there's an open day, who's spending time together, and who's taking lead when the whole team is doing something together. There's a little bit of intentional things that take place, and then there are some other things that's observational just to watch a team organically form, and those bonds build, and new relationships begin and all those things. But a lot of learning. Just world history is overwhelming there, and that was really cool. But, it was just amazing on every front. Then when you are trying to translate that to where we're at now, you get ten extra practices in the summer to prepare for that trip.”