CONWAY, S.C. — Cliff Ellis is an accomplished musician and author, but Friday is a reminder that coaching always has been his true calling.
“Coaching is my life,” Ellis said this week as his Coastal Carolina basketball team prepared to play Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament in Raleigh, N.C. “Those other things are sidelines.”
Ellis, who was raised in Chipley and is strongly rooted in the Florida Panhandle, is one of 10 coaches to qualify for the NCAA tournament with programs at four different schools. He also is the second college coach in history to win championships in four different conferences.
On Friday, he will attempt to become the first coach to lead a No. 16 seed to victory against a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. The Chanticleers (21-12) will square off with the East Region’s top seed, Virginia (28-6), at 8:25 p.m. CDT. The game will air on TBS.
Ellis, 68, said he and his players aren’t shying away from the historical opportunity before them. No. 1 seeds are a combined 116-0 in first-round matchups against teams seeded 16th.
“The media makes it a spectacle, so there is no way you can go up there not knowing the situation,” Ellis said. “It’s a great way to make history. A 16-seed has never beaten a 1-seed. Our focus is on being the one who makes history.”
Facing long odds
Virginia won the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season championship and defeated Florida State, Pittsburgh and Duke en route to the ACC tournament title.
“They’re very good,” Ellis said. “Tony Bennett is — and his dad (Dick) was — a tremendous coach. I thought a lot of Dick, and I think a lot of Tony. Tony played against me when he was at Clemson, and I coached against his dad when he was at Wisconsin-Green Bay. I’ve always had that respect.”
The top-seeded Cavaliers have won 16 of their last 17 games since mid-January, the only hiccup an overtime loss at Maryland on March 9.
“They’re lengthy, very physical,” Ellis noted. “They’re not going to allow you to make easy buckets. We have to be patient. They’re a halfcourt-oriented team that is going to grind you out and strive on you making mistakes. They don’t make many mistakes. They’ve proven that they’re tough.
“They won the ACC, and having been in the league for 10 years, I know how tough that is when you’re not at North Carolina or at Duke or at Syracuse. They’re very special to do what they’ve done.”
The Chanticleers don’t intend to go down lightly, if at all. Coastal Carolina, which ranks 11th nationally in rebounding, will bring its own physical play into PNC Arena.
“I don’t know if we do it better than anyone else, but we do try to focus on it,” Ellis said of his team’s rebounding prowess. “You’ve got to have players who buy into it. Rebounding is an instinct. If the ball goes up, you’ve got to make the first hit. You’ve got to make contact first.”
Ellis remarked that Coastal Carolina started the year losing five of seven games and eight of its first 15. Rebounding and tough defense kept the team afloat, however, while the offense rounded into form, he said.
“When you’re an inexperienced team together, you don’t know each other’s moves and if a pass needs to go to a certain spot,” he said. “The offense can be shoddy at times. Even though we’ve got guys who can score, our offense has been suspect at times. Inexperienced teams have difficulty getting it all together in a year, and that’s why I’m proud of this team. I’ve had back-to-back 28-win teams that were more talented, but this is the best team chemistry we’ve had. It’s what has separated us from the other teams is the chemistry.”
Local ties, steady rise
Upon graduating from Chipley High School in the mid-1960s, Ellis continued his education at Chipola Junior College and Florida State University. He landed his first coaching job at Ruckel Junior High in Niceville after graduating from FSU in 1968. Three years later he took over as the JV coach at Niceville High School, and that led to a job coaching the varsity team at Ocala Vanguard for one year.
Ellis jumped at the chance to coach college ball in 1972 and was named the head coach at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn. His NCAA Division I coaching career began in 1975 when he took over the program at South Alabama, where he took the Jaguars to two NCAA tournaments and steered them to three Sun Belt Conference championships. Ellis won 171 games in nine years there.
Ellis parlayed that success into a head coaching job at Clemson in 1984, and he remained in that position for the next decade while compiling another 177 victories, an Atlantic Coast Conference title in 1990 and six postseason tournament appearances.
He left Clemson for Auburn in 1994, and success followed him. The Tigers won a school-record 29 games in the 1998-99 season, and he was tabbed for national coach of the year honors. He vacated his post at Auburn in 2004 after racking up another 186 wins. Auburn was placed on probation after Ellis’ departure, but the head coach was not implicated in any wrongdoing.
Ellis landed on his feet at Coastal Carolina three years later, and he has continued his ascent up the list of the all-time winningest Division I coaches. He passed the legendary John Wooden on March 1 with his 665th career victory, and his current total of 668 victories is tied with Bob Huggins and Gary Williams for the 23rd-most wins ever by a Division I coach.
“It really is a reflection on the players who have played for me,” Ellis said of the gaudy win total. “I’m carrying the torch for a lot of players who played for me. With the run we’re making now, so many players have reached out. They’re just giddy about it. It’s like going back in time, and we can all go back and talk about the memories we’ve shared.”
When he is able to step away from the basketball court, Ellis said he likes to return to the area and enjoy his familiarity of the region and the camaraderie of family and long-time friends.
“I still have a brother and two sisters who still live in the area and a lot of nephews and nieces and relatives,” he said. “We have a beach home near Rosemary Beach out on (County) 30A and go back every year. I don’t get out there as much as I like to, but I still get back two or three times a year to visit friends and family, do a little fishing and play a little bit of golf.”
Jack of all trades
While Ellis readily admits coaching is his life, he has many varied interests ranging from crab fishing to kayaking. He has enjoyed a long, fruitful— albeit not exactly lucrative — career as a musician dating back to the 1960s, and he produced an album as recently as last summer when he reunited with his college band, The Villagers. Ellis’ crooning voice can be heard on “Dancin’ in the Moonlight,” a song that can be found on YouTube and downloaded on iTunes.
“I went on iTunes, and there’s a demand for it,” he said. “It’s become a neat fad, and I’ve gotten a kick out of it. I guess iTunes is putting up all the old songs that I’ve done, and that’s been interesting. The media is making a spectacle out of it, and I’m just trying to win basketball games.”
Ellis also has penned three books and he’s produced a DVD entitled “The Attitude of Rebounding.” He even dabbled once in ostrich farming.
“I wasn’t an ostrich farmer very long,” he admitted.
Ellis’ books include “Zone Press Variations for Winning Basketball,” “The Complete Book of Fast Break Basketball,” and “Cliff Ellis: The Winning Edge.” The autobiography was released in 2000.
“I wrote those books, and I’ve always been a guy who liked to press and run the break,” he said. “As the players get better, you have to adjust, but the basic elements are the same (now as they were then). Kids are more adept at ballhandling and can do different things. You have to tweak some of the things you did 15, 20 years ago.”