Former Clemson basketball star gets DeAndre Hopkins, Tee Higgins comparisons from Dabo Swinney

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Sonny Giuliano
Former Clemson basketball star gets DeAndre Hopkins, Tee Higgins comparisons from Dabo Swinney image

© Ken Ruinard / USA Today Network South Carolina / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Ian Schieffelin isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last college basketball player to make the jump from the hardwood to the gridiron, but this season, the former All-ACC forward is hoping to become the latest success story at Clemson… a program which has a rich history of turning former hoops standouts into football stars. And that could be because Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney sees that the body type and the skillset is translatable from one sport to the other.

“I think there are a lot of skills that translate if you’re a big, thick kid,” Swinney told ESPN’s Rece Davis (h/t Daniel Hager of On3). “And then you see a lot of guys like DeAndre Hopkins for example. He was a basketball player. Tee Higgins was much more of a basketball player. Mike Williams, much more of a basketball player than football player. We took Mike Williams from Lake Marion, SC and he was a jump ball guy. That’s it. But he really developed the skills. [Tee] could have played Division I basketball. DeAndre Hopkins did play Division I at Clemson.”

Now it’s worth noting that Schieffelin did play four years of high school football at Grayson High School in Georgia before setting his sights exclusively on basketball. As a three-star recruit, he joined the Clemson basketball program in 2021. Schieffelin was an occasional starter during his first two seasons but became a mainstay of the Tigers lineup as a junior.

In his final two years playing for head coach Brad Brownell, the 6-foot-8, 240 pound Schieffelin averaged 11.3 points and 9.4 rebounds per game, using his big body and soft hands to rank in the top three in rebounds in the ACC in back-to-back seasons.

“All those skills translate,” Swinney said. “That’s why Ian wants to play tight end. I’m like he’s either going to be a tight end or a defensive end. I was like ‘I don’t know if you have good hands,’ but his dad was like ‘oh he’s got good hands.’ He handles the ball all the time.”

It’s still early in the summer, so there’s no indication as to what kind of role Schieffelin will have within Clemson’s offense. But at his size, you have to figure that he’d at the very least prove to be a valuable red zone target for quarterback Cade Klubnik.

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