Clemson basketball: What we know about the new assistants

After saying he would take his time and was in no hurry to hire assistant coaches to replace Antonio Reynolds Dean and Kareem Richardson, Clemson basketball head coach Brad Brownell did just the opposite and hired Billy Donlon and Sean Dixon to fill the spots.

Donlon comes with head coaching experience, first at Wright State from 2010-2016 (109-94) and most recently at Kansas City where he was 46-39 overall.

Dixon is a Presbyterian grad, where he was twice  a team captain, second team All-Big South  as a sophomore and first team All-Big South honors as a junior and senior. He finished his playing career with 1,106 career points and earned a bachelor’s degree in business management in 2007.

He began his coaching career at his alma mater before moving on to UNC-Asheville and Middle Tennessee State.

Donlon has previously worked with Brownell, at both Wright State and UNC-Wilmington, so he should be familiar with the manner in which Brownell runs his program and the style of play Brownell teams employ.

These hires make sense in a lot of ways.  A known assistant with previous head coaching experience and a younger coach with in-state ties, not to mention ties to North Carolina in the recent past.

In a tweet earlier this week former Tiger Terrence Oglesby mentioned the potential for all three assistant coaches turning over and in researching these coaches I found that the other holdover assistant, Dick Bender, is in the mix for the head coaching position at DePauw, where Brad Brownell played for Bender.

It appears that the job is still open as of this post, but I have no idea if Bender is still a candidate for the position, so theoretically at least, Brownell could be in for a complete staff turnover, not to mention the roster upheaval of the last few weeks.

It’s been an interesting month for Clemson basketball.