Brad Brownell did not hide how he feels about Clemson missing out on North Carolina in ACC play this season.
At the 2026 ACC Tipoff at the Hilton Charlotte Uptown on Wednesday, the Clemson coach made it clear he thinks the league got this one wrong. For the first time since the 1950-51 campaign, the Tigers and Tar Heels will not meet in the regular season, even though both are charter members of the ACC.
“I don't like it. I said it last year with Virginia: I hate that we don't play everybody.
I don't understand. If we're gonna play 18 games, why not play everybody once and a partner twice?”
Brownell said about Clemson not facing North Carolina during league play. That's just my opinion.
My opinion apparently doesn't mean a whole lot, and it probably shouldn't. But I'll reiterate that in spring meetings.”
Brownell’s frustration is easy to understand. Clemson and North Carolina are two of the biggest athletic brands in the conference, and both are expected to be tournament-caliber teams. Yet the ACC schedule leaves Clemson without a game against the Tar Heels, one of the league’s marquee names.
The setup is especially jarring because the league has 18 teams and an 18-game schedule. In Brownell’s view, that should mean everybody gets a shot at everybody at least once.
Instead, the Tigers will play Florida State twice and not face North Carolina at all. Georgia Tech has been identified as Clemson’s permanent rival in men’s basketball, which makes sense geographically since the schools are less than 100 miles apart. But the ACC also added a second repeat opponent, and that created a “no play” situation for each team.
That means Clemson and North Carolina, two founding ACC members, will not see each other in the regular season for the first time since 1950-51.
Brownell has now voiced this complaint before, and he repeated it again Wednesday. His larger point is simple: in a league built on tradition, the teams that have been there since the beginning should be meeting every year. Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia and Wake Forest were all named in that argument as schools that should be on the schedule annually.
For Brownell, the issue is bigger than one missing game. It is about what the ACC is supposed to be, and whether the league is protecting the matchups that made it matter in the first place.
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