GLENDALE, AZ — When all things are said and done, Connecticut native, Bristol Central alum and UConn great Donovan Clingan may go down as one of the most successful basketball players from the state of Connecticut.
All Clingan has done since high school has been winning championships. He delivered a state championship in an undefeated senior season for the Rams in 2022, he then played a vital role coming off the bench in UConn’s 2023 National Championship run.
Now, this season he was the driving force as he led the Huskies to back-to-back titles.
Behind Clingan, the UConn Huskies have become the first back-to-back national champions in nearly 20 years. They also claim the school's sixth men’s title becoming only the fourth program in collegiate history to achieve that feat.
Clingan said when he reflects on his journey to be in the conversation as most successful basketball players from the state means a lot.
“I’ve had a long journey. I’ve had some bumps in the road. You know, I lost my mom in the eighth grade and that just really pushed me to be great,” Clingan said. “I really love the state of Connecticut. I really love UConn. I love the staff. I love this program. I love everything about Connecticut so to just put my name as one of the best in the books to ever go to UConn. It just means a lot to me.”
The phrase that has consistently come up throughout the season when talking about their ultimate goal was to try and make history in a place that’s hard to make history in. Two national championships later, Clingan reflected on his commitment to UConn believing it couldn’t have gone any better.
“Two-time national champions, there’s literally nothing else that you can do,” Clingan said. “We’ve won every championship that we could this year. Last year, we didn’t win everything, but we still won the national championship.”
He said this feeling will take a while to sink in and truly realize what they’ve accomplished.
“This is crazy. You dream of this. We put a lot of work in. We’ve been going since June,” he said. “The amount of hours that we put in. No team in the country is practicing two and a half hours a day before a game. We are and it’s because we want it more. That’s why team’s aren’t able to sustain our level for a full forty minutes.”
The road to a second national title was one that pitted a major battle between the top team in the country in UConn against the best player in the country in Purdue’s two-time AP Player of the Year in Zach Edey.
Individually, the NCAA Men’s National Championship circled around the battle of the bigs in Edey and Clingan. As far as the stat line goes, Edey’s 37 points and 10 rebounds showed his own dominance, but Clingan wasn’t interested in trading points back and forth.
The game plan for Clingan and UConn was to encourage the one on one battle between the two and run Purdue off the three-point line. Purdue shot just seven three-pointers the entire game, making only one.
Clingan said it was a total team effort.
“It wasn’t me. He scored [37] points on me. It’s the other guys. The four guys that are on the perimeter that held them to one three-pointer for the whole night,” Clingan said. “It just goes to show you how special this team is and how everyone is willing to do something.”
While Clingan’s humble remarks are accurate in the team’s defense taking advantage of Purdue’s want to feed Edey, Clingan did a lot of the dirty work that doesn’t necessarily appear on a stat line.
Edey began the game on fire scoring 11 of the first 16 points, but as the game progressed Clingan’s presence disrupted Edey’s dominance. Edey finished the first half 2-5 from the field after starting the game shooting 71 percent.
Clingan then continued agitating the taller Edey in the second half, holding him to shooting 1-5 from the field in the first 10 minutes of the final half. The Bristol native also kept Edey off the glass, which allowed UConn to gain valuable offensive rebounds and second chance points.
Purdue coach Matt Painter said that was the difference in the game.
“We just were wasting so much energy to fight once they got it to double-digits; then we would get stops, and we couldn't get rebounds. That was just really hard for us to overcome at that time,” Painter said. “They did a great job of staying home. We were going to go to the well with Zach as much as we could at that point. In a game like this, we had to be able to rebound defensively better.”
He said overall UConn did a good job defensively.
“They get a lot of credit. Donovan Clingan is a very good defensive player, but we've played against athletes, played against some really good defensive guys this year and in the tournament, but not the collection of defensive players like UConn has,” he said. “We play against somebody, they would have a lock-down defender. These guys are bringing lock-down defenders off the bench. Defense always travels. Tip the hat to them. They were great.”
Clingan was named to the 2024 NCAA Men’s Final Four All-Tournament team along with UConn’s Tristen Newton, Stephon Castle, and Cam Spencer. Newton was named Most Outstanding Player and Edey rounded out the all-tournament team.