What Billy Donlon's loss says about Clemson Basketball
CLEMSON — Most everyone with the team was still asleep the morning after Clemson lost to Alabama in the Elite Eight in Los Angeles two years ago.
Billy Donlon and Graham Neff were the early birds that morning in the team hotel, the lone two people eating breakfast.
Coaches have long memories. But Donlon didn’t have to go back far — a mere year — to pinpoint the key juncture that made this stirring run to the brink of the Final Four possible.
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“The morning after we lost to Alabama in L.A., Graham and I were kind of the only ones down there in the hotel having breakfast,” Donlon told Tigerillustrated.com in the summer of 2024. “And I thanked him. Because after the 14-6 ACC year, Graham made the decision to bring us back. It certainly felt that way.
“He could have made the decision not to do that. And obviously that decision has paid off immensely for everybody involved. It was a great decision. Because there’s nobody that could’ve been hired that would have taken this team to the Elite Eight, and could have done the things that Brad has done and is going to do.”
Donlon didn’t sound like a typical assistant that day when he sat down for an interview with Tigerillustrated.com. He’d been a head coach before, and you got the feeling he would be again if he ever had the desire and the right situation materialized.
That opportunity beckoned recently when Eastern Michigan pursued Donlon and he took the job. He’s been here for four seasons, enough time for Clemson to make NCAA Tournament appearances so commonplace that fans didn’t jump for joy a few days ago when Clemson landed its third consecutive bid.
Brad Brownell is probably going to have to move quickly, given the new world of the transfer portal and the fluid nature of rosters. That reality brings more urgency than ever, so our intel points to a replacement being named quite soon after the end of the season.
But all the focus right now is on surviving and advancing past Friday’s first-round game against Iowa. We’re told Donlon has agreed to see this season through, to remain with the Tigers until they’re eliminated.
Let’s unpack the anecdote Donlon shared with us about the morning after that Elite Eight game in California two years ago.
When Donlon joined Brownell at Clemson, surely he wondered whether it might be a short stay. After a first-round NCAA flameout against Rutgers in 2021, the Tigers went 17-16 overall and 8-12 in the ACC in 2021-22.
They made major strides in Donlon’s first season, totaling 23 wins and finishing tied for third in the ACC with a 14-6 record. They even reached the ACC Tournament semifinals, just as they did this year. But some bad losses ended up costing them, and in highly controversial fashion they were left out of the field.
Neff, who’d replaced Dan Radakovich a little more than a year earlier, decided to take a strong stand on Brownell. As the Tigers were preparing for an opening-round game against NIT, Neff went ahead and had a press conference to say he had Brownell’s back.
Clemson then laid a big, fat egg against Morehead State. In the moment it made Neff look bad, and you had to think he questioned whether he made the right move to rally around his coach. Fans were saying he showed his inexperience by calling that press conference before the NIT defeat.
But let’s go back to what Neff said in that press conference two days before the Morehead State debacle:
“I hope the NCAA becomes a minimum. Yes, we weren’t selected last night. But I view us as an NCAA Tournament team. I want to plan for the NCAA Tournament, and continue to raise the bar of expectations. I hope to always be in a position with the program where that’s a legitimate offseason expectation. It was last year and it will be this year.”
Important context here: At the time Clemson was losing Hunter Tyson and Brevin Galloway, two important pieces. That suggested some rebuilding the next season.
Brownell had yet to distinguish himself as a portal master, but Neff could see it coming.
“I think there are opportunities for the stars to align next year to the point that you’re not sweating on Selection Sunday,” Neff said that day.
Soon thereafter, a prolific Syracuse shooting guard named Joe Girard would choose Clemson over LSU. And Donlon played a major role in making that happen.
The next year, Clemson indeed wasn’t sweating on Selection Sunday before it beat New Mexico. And then Baylor. And then Arizona. And then was up 13 on Alabama with less than eight minutes left in the first half in Los Angeles.
They were that close before the Crimson Tide took control, largely on the strength of an out-of-body shooting night by Jarin Stevenson, and left Donlon with no game to prepare for early the next morning as he walked down to breakfast at the team hotel and saw Neff.
Donlon is a big loss, but his departure says so many important things about what it takes to build a consistent winner in basketball, at Clemson.
And heck, it might say something about what Dabo Swinney needs to get the football program back to a place everyone can be proud of.
Swinney has recently hired big personalities, big voices he trusts to suggest and impart different ideas.
That was Donlon, for sure, evidence we recall most recently when Clemson was in Chapel Hill and had the ball last in a tight game.
Brownell and Donlon were intensely disagreeing on something during a timeout. We don’t know what.
But the important part was Donlon had the stature and the clout to use his voice and push back. Those are guys you want. Those are guys you need.
And the relationship between Brownell and his boss hasn’t been easy. Neff’s decisions to stick with Brownell way back when seem smart now, but they weren’t remotely viewed as slam dunks at the time.
Clemson has won 98 games over the past four seasons. The Tigers are 55-24 overall in the ACC over that same stretch. Only Duke has more victories.
Clemson’s 98-40 record over the last four years is the most wins in Clemson history over a four-year period. The previous record was 93-41 under Oliver Purnell between 2006 and 2010.
Four years ago, Donlon’s arrival wasn’t big news.
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His departure is.
He’ll be a hard guy to replace, but that’s a good problem to have.
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That says very good things about Neff’s decision to stay the course amid considerable scrutiny.
And great things about the blossoming of Clemson basketball here in Brownell’s second act.
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