Clemson, Brownell Complete Staff Rebuild Following Offseason Departures

It’s been an interesting past couple of weeks for the Clemson Tigers and head coach Brad Brownell, as he’s lost five total pieces of his staff since their season ended a few weeks back in Tampa, Florida, following their exit from the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

With the transfer portal now open for the next two weeks, replacing those departures quickly became a priority, especially at the general manager position. Fortunately, Brownell has now filled the last vacancies on his staff.

While not officially announced, experienced coach Chris Hollender is expected to be the final assistant coach hired on Brownell’s staff.

Similar to Clemson Football’s new offensive coordinator, Chad Morris, Hollender has been out of the coaching game for a minute — three years to be specific. Yet, he has nearly a decade of experience at the high-major level, including a five-year stint at Missouri and a three-year stint at Mississippi State. He also spent seven years at Army under Jim Crews from 2002 to 2009.

Most recently, he spent two months at Wichita State in 2023 before resigning for personal reasons. Since then, he’s been heavily involved with a Kansas City-based analytics group named Just Play Sports Solutions, which is extremely well-known in the collegiate sports space.

Hollender also has some close ties to the Clemson coach, as he played and coached at Evansville — Brownell’s hometown school — under head coach Marty Simmons, who worked at Clemson as a special assistant to Brownell from 2018 to 2021 before leaving to take the head job at Eastern Illinois.

But while the addition of Hollender helps stabilize the bench, Clemson’s most important move comes from behind the scenes, addressing the general manager position left vacant by Lucas McKay’s departure.

Brownell turned to former Samford associate head coach Tyler Murray to fill the role and will join the staff immediately to help the Tigers pursue players in the transfer portal.

Murray had spent just one season with the Bulldogs, who finished 18-14 this past season, and had spent the previous five years at Lipscomb, compiling a 94-66 record and an NCAA Tournament appearance over that half-decade. He also had stints at Charleston Southern and Furman.

The most significant connection to Clemson he has is newly hired assistant coach Chad Warner, as Murray was an assistant under him for six years at Division II program Shorter University, playing a key role in the recruiting department.

These two hires come in the wake of recent departures, including general manager Lucas McKay taking his talents to Oklahoma and assistant coach Sean Dixon joining Louisville’s staff to work under head coach Pat Kelsey over this past weekend.

The other recent hirings of assistant coaches Andre Morgan, Chad Harriman and Warner came from the departures of associate head coach Billy Donlon, who’s taking the head coaching job at Eastern Michigan and from assistants Dick Bender and Jeff Reynolds, both of whom are retiring.