I still have my 'play hard' towel. I use it to wipe my dog's feet off when she comes in.
A fair and intriguing question. A few thoughts:
1. In retrospect, Clem was a remarkable coach and program leader. He really knew what he was doing. His bottom-line success speaks for itself, even though tainted/expunged by scandal.
2. That said, his teams were not the same team on the road. They played with so much less savvy, intelligence and confidence on the road. It was remarkable in a strange way. It was like they had kryptonite in their shorts. Then they came home and were Superman again.
3. He cared so much about the program and the community. He intended to come in here and make this a basketball town. Not just coach the program but build interest and support for hoops in the city and state. I would say that the improvement we've seen in local basketball in the last quarter century was sparked by the buzz he created in the program and the effect it had on the community. This doesn't get talked about much, partially because of the scandal, but I expect the history books to reflect this in due time. This is where Tubby pales in comparison. He just works here.
4. I consider the above bullet to have ultimately led to Clem's downfall. He felt he could win a national championship at Minnesota, and he was going to work toward accomplishing that if it were the last thing he did. He got his first taste when he almost landed Chris Webber. I heard him say once that, had Webber signed here, we could have won the national title. He said it with enough bitterness that I knew he was driven to eventually get over that hump. I might be speculating too much, but that's about the timing of when the major corner cutting and violations started to occur. They went from doing things right at Minnesota to doing things wrong at some point, and I think that was the point.
5. Someone said it, but I have to repeat it - he had some outstanding assistant coaches. The product dipped a bit when they lost Al Brown but then improved again when he hired Bill Brown for X's and O's. Larry Davis was an outstanding recruiter who could sell refrigerators to eskimos. I feel that, at the point when it all came crashing down, Clem and his staff were hitting new heights of coaching prowess.
