Cliff Ellis

And so...

Yeah, I mean, Cliff Ellis was one of my earlier guys that I was around.

He was at Auburn.

And then when I started my first job at Birmingham Southern, actually where Bucky played, there's a guy named Dwayne Reble, who I had known from New Orleans as a young kid growing up going to his camps.

I could see the, I could see it like it was yesterday.

And I said, "Bam, that's where I gotta go." So I pick up a phone and I call a gentleman called Cliff Ellis, who's the men's coach, and I said, "Hey, Cliff, here's my story."

He picked the phone up? He answered?

Picked the phone up.

Look, I, um, you know, I did sports radio, uh, back 10, 15 years ago, uh, when during, and, and lived through the, the Tony Barbee era, era of Auburn basketball and, you know, it, and, uh, and I...

Look, I, look, Cliff Ellis was a fine coach and, and, and did some good things at Auburn, but you know, I, you know, I said when, when they hired Bruce Pearl that I thought he was the perfect person to hire for, for a program like Auburn's.

He's a guy that's gonna get out there and he's gonna sell it and he's gonna turn things around, and it's gonna be a...

He's a good X's and O's coach.

First time they've done that since Oliver Purnell back in the day.

I think he's only the third coach to do that along with Purnell and maybe Cliff Ellis.

So they're in a kind of a high mark for them right now.

But what does success look like for Clemson basketball? It's not exactly ripping off records like Duke has every year or pulling in five stars and stuff like that.