Clemson's Director of Basketball Operations Dick Bender '89 Returns to Maryland

January 22, 2011

4615 January 22, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — "Basketball has been a major part of Dick Bender's life, from the time he first began dribbling a basketball in his cousin's backyard in Grantsville as a youngster, to today as he prepares to return to his home state with the Clemson Tigers for a game against the University of Maryland," begins a story in the Times-News of Cumberland, Maryland, previewing today's Clemson-Maryland Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball game. Bender, who is now director of basketball operations for Clemson, is a former assistant coach at DePauw University, where he earned a master's degree in 1989.

"At DePauw, Bender was an assistant to Royce Waltman, former Bedford (Pa.) High coach and assistant to Bobby Knight at Indiana, and the Tigers were ranked No. 1 several times and finished national runner-up in 1990," writes Mike Mathews. "In a unique twist, Bender is an assistant at Clemson to first-year head coach Brad Brownell, who played at DePauw when Bender was coaching there."

"Dick is tremendous and unbelievably loyal, and has tremendous basketball knowledge, especially with motion offense," said Brownell, a 1991 DePauw graduate, in announcing Bender's appointment last 70493 April. "He's unbelievably organized and will serve as my chief of staff in terms of running this program. He will keep me pointed in the right direction and make sure our players are taken care of in a lot of ways."