07/06/07 - Summer Happenings
From Tiger Town …

Greetings from Clemson Tiger Summer Basketball! I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and spending some quality time with family and friends. We certainly have had a multitude of activities going on within our program this off-season ranging from summer school for our players, recruiting, staff changes, summer camps, freshman orientation, and even a player getting married down in South Georgia!

Most of the team just got finished with the first session of summer school this past week. We use this time first of all to concentrate on academics and try to get ahead in the classroom as we build up to the fall semester. Our emphasis on academics has paid dividends this summer as last week we received news that out of the ten selections to the 2007 All-ACC Academic Team we had three get chosen, the most in the conference and the highest number in over twenty years at Clemson!

I'm sure some of you have heard the saying, "teams are made in the winter but the players are made in the summer." We want our players to really concentrate on their individual improvement through hard work and discipline this summer. Our staff stressed to them at the end of the season specific area's of improvement each player could make in the off-season. Also, while taking a few courses the players work out with Jon Sanderson, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Basketball, in the weight room everyday! These workouts are voluntary but the team knows how important it is to get stronger and stay in shape all year long. NCAA rules do not allow assistant coaches to work with the players on the floor in the summer months so they have to individually commit themselves each day to work on trying to improve!

Also this off-season we hold all of our summer camps. The Oliver Purnell Camp is an integral part of our program in the summer and just concluded last weekend with over sixty-five teams competing in our Team Camp. We held three sessions this year that included an elite camp, individual overnight camp, and a team camp. All together the camps had over one-thousand players, coaches, and camp staff visit our campus in the past month!

Josh Postorino, our camp director who we just hired in June took over the camps this year. He is the new Director of Operations on our staff but certainly is well known to me and the rest of the coaches. Josh was my first recruit at Dayton when I got the job there and when he finished playing he joined my staff for three seasons. He has been an assistant at Marshall University the past four years but very glad to be back and a part of our program again! He took over for Will Wade who had an excellent opportunity to become an assistant coach at Harvard University for Tommy Amaker. Will was an excellent worker and a big part of this Clemson Basketball Program. We all wish him well and know he will be successful!

I am currently gearing up now for July Recruiting. We start on the road July 6 and have twenty days to travel all over the country watching players compete at camps, tournaments, summer leagues, and even at their school open gym. This is a very important time for us to properly evaluate prospective recruits playing against the best competition in the country. Our recruiting efforts already paid off this April with two early commitments for the 2008 class. As you can imagine this month gets a little hectic at times traveling from different city to different city each day but is enjoyable also because I get to watch a ton of basketball.

I will check back in with you again after the recruiting period ends and when I get a chance to unpack my bags in my own home! I hope everyone has a great July!

Go Tigers!

-- Coach P