Meet the ‘kind of insane’ coach at High Point who got his start at Southern Utah

PORTLAND, Ore. — Before first-year coach Flynn Clayman was a face that hundreds of thousands of Americans noticed hunched whereas over addressing his group in the locker room after High Point’s 83-82 win over fifth-seeded Wisconsin In Thursday’s first spherical of the NCAA males’s basketball event, he was a rising assistant at one of Utah’s six Division I universities.

Now one of the prime faces of mid-major basketball as the Panthers put together to face fourth-seeded Arkansas in Saturday’s second spherical at the Moda Center (7:45 pm MT, TBS).

The power of the 37-year-old coach has caught the consideration of the faculty basketball followers throughout the nation, prompting even former NBA nice and TNT broadcaster Charles Barkley to quip that he hopes to make use of his unused fourth season of faculty eligibility for the Panthers as a result of “that guy makes me want to play.

Clayman arrived at High Point, the small town in North Carolina with a private Methodist-affiliated university of the same name, less than three years ago. But his star was rising well before, when he met his wife Katie — now also a High Point assistant women’s basketball coach — during his first job as a graduate assistant at Southern Utah.

Even then, the Thunderbirds were saying some of the same things his current players said about him — but in the nicest way possible.

“I say he is form of insane,” said Rob Martin, the Panthers’ senior point guard who had 23 points and 10 assists with just one turnover in 36 minutes against the Badgers.

“He’s a terrific coach,” he added, with a laugh. “He brings it every day; our guys love him. We work onerous. Super proud of him for believing in us, trusting us to go on the market and make the performs.”

Insane? Martin quickly walked back the line, adding that it was in jest.

But the cat was out of the bag.

“What Rob mentioned, coach Flynn is insane,” said Cam’Ron Fletcher, a senior transfer from Xavier who spent time at Florida State and Kentucky as a freshman. “I can say that I really feel like he can have rather a lot of success at this stage as a result of of that.

“Him and (Arkansas coach John Calipari) got a lot of similarities. I can see coach Flynn having a lot of success being a head basketball coach because of that, him being insane.”

Back in 2017, the former journeyman participant at Colorado State and Troy took a job as a graduate assistant at Southern Utah whereas engaged on a grasp’s diploma in Cedar City, the place former SUU head coach Todd Simon supplied him a job as an entry-level particular assistant for round $12,000 a 12 months after the two crossed paths on the membership circuit.

“I liked his story and determination,” Simon instructed KSL.com. “Finding hungry young coaches and helping their journey is a passion of mine and he fits that mold.

“I might see he was good, passionate and had a knack and persistence for what it takes to recruit,” added Simon, who is now in his third season at Bowling Green.

SUU was his first full-time gig. Spending time on Simon’s staff as a special assistant, assistant coach and eventually associate head coach from 2017-23 set Clayman on a star-making path.

It’s also where he met his wife Katie, a former dual-sport basketball player and track and field athlete at Oregon who spent four seasons as a Thunderbirds assistant that included a WAC regular-season title and NCAA Tournament trip in 2023.

Marrying another coach — Katie Clayman is currently an assistant with the High Point women’s team that faced Vanderbilt in an NCAA Tournament first-round game Saturday in Nashville — has been key to her early success, too.

“It’s simply been excellent,” he said of their relationship. “I really like the sport of basketball. Then to discover a girl that I really like greater than the sport of basketball, I believed that was inconceivable. But it occurred. It’s most likely half as a result of she loves the sport, too.”

Clayman went 2-1 ace interim head coach in the College Basketball Invitational for the Thunderbirds, which followed a 24-13 campaign that included a 12-6 record in his first season in the Western Athletic Conference and a wild win over frontrunner Utah Valley in a WAC Tournament semifinal. He also helped bring in stars like Tevian Jones and John Knight III, and guided SUU to the program’s highest ranking in both the NET and KenPom in program history.

In three seasons since former Western Illinois coach Rob Jeter was hired, the Thunderbirds are 32-62 with a 15-39 record in the WAC and most recently the No. 272 ​​NET ranking, which is nearly 200 spots lower than No. 75 High Point.

Clayman, meanwhile, took the associate head coach job at High Point, ran the Panthers’ offense en route to the first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2025, and was promoted to head coach the day after Alan Huss took the associate head coach and coach-in-waiting job at Creighton last April.

Since then, he became the first team from the Big South to win back-to-back conference regular-season titles since Coastal Carolina in 2011 and marched to a 31-4 campaign in his first full season.

And he did it all while being himself.

“I simply attempt to be genuine in who I’m,” he said. “I really like the sport. I would like what’s greatest for these guys.

“When I’m out there getting mad about things, it’s because I want them to win and I want them to have that experience they’ve had.”