Here's how point guards changed for Clemson basketball coach Brad Brownell

CLEMSON -- Clemson basketball coach Brad Brownell pored through archived videos and quizzed contacts just like he always does before making offers to possible signees.

But he already knew.

Jaelin Llewellyn was the one.

Within a few hours of the Princeton senior point guard's entering the transfer portal last month, Brownell had reached out. The number was already in his phone. There wasn't a lot of chit-chat, either.

Would you like to come to Clemson? That's about the extent of the courtship.

"It's a little bit like speed-dating with these grad transfers and older guys," Brownell said. "They don't need the song and dance. ... We knew right away he was the one we wanted. We didn't need to watch anything."

Llewellyn posted on social media Tuesday that he had committed to Clemson, and it became official a day later. He changes schools without changing mascots.

"Something about them Tigers," he posted on Twitter.

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Llewellyn averaged 15.7 points per game last season in leading Princeton (23-7, 12-2) to the Ivy League regular-season championship. He ranked in the top 10 in the Ivy League in 3-pointers made and 3-point percentage. He scored more than 1,000 points in only three years.

The Ivy League canceled its 2019-20 season because of the pandemic and doesn't allow for redshirts. For that reason, Clemson can petition the NCAA for a second season of eligibility. Llewellyn is not just a shooter and a scorer. He's a clamp-down defender and rocket-up rebounder with size (6-foot-2, 185) helpful for both. He had nine rebounds last season against South Carolina.

By the end of the day March 14, when Llewellyn entered the transfer portal, he also had been contacted by Miami, Wake Forest, Arkansas, Stanford, Ohio State, Cincinnati, West Virginia and 25 other Power Five schools.

"Jaelin can do a lot of different things," Brownell said. "He's had big-scoring games (as many as 29 points). He's had other games where he's had six assists if he needed to do that. ... Jaelin was the No. 1 target from the start and it was a position that we had the most need."

Two weeks earlier, Clemson's point guards, junior Al-Amir Dawes and senior Nick Honor, went into the portal. They played together sometimes but mostly shared the position. Dawes averaged 11.3 points with 75 assists. Honor averaged 7.7 points with 79 assists.

"I knew one would leave for sure and possibly both," Brownell said. "It just turned out that way. And it's OK. I wish them both well. I'm grateful that I got to coach them and and I think they did good things for us. They helped us win a lot of games. Those guys were instrumental in our NCAA tournament team (2020-21). You're not going to get a really good player unless there is an opportunity right away. So that worked into it."

Brownell had Llewellyn's cell number because the Mississauga, Ontario, native was a recruiting target while playing at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. 

"We recruited Jaelin a little bit out of high school," Brownell said. "We didn't really go all the way to the end with him. We were out after a while. But you still kind of peek at them, especially if they play well enough that you can see them. He was a good player, so it was easy to see that the guy was impactful."

Brownell said he is looking to add at least one more player from the transfer portal, but it won't be a point guard. He has full confidence in Josh Beadle, who took a redshirt this season as a freshman and didn't play in a game. Beadle was a 1,000-point scorer at Cardinal Newman High School in Columbia.

 "You guys haven't seen Josh," Brownell said. "He's a combo guard (point and wing), 6-3, athletic. There are going to be growing pains with a young player. They're disappointed at first in redshirting, probably. If you redshirt a kid now (with the ease and abundance of the transfer portal), that shows how much you like him. He has a chance to be a special player. We're excited about Josh."

Todd Shanesy covers Clemson athletics for the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Twitter at @ToddShanesySHJ.