Tennessee basketball didn’t lose a single scholarship player to the transfer portal this offseason. But the Vols lost an assistant coach Wednesday when Rod Clark reportedly accepted a job to join Darian DeVries staff at Indiana.
Eleventh-year Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes commented on Clark’s departure Wednesday night at the Big Orange Caravan stop in Nashville.
“Rod was great,” Barnes said. “But you know what, we feel like we’ve got that position covered and … I’m sure he’ll do a good job at Indiana, but we’ve got it covered, because there’s a lot of people that obviously would love to be at the University of Tennessee, in my job, but we’re excited about the direction that we’re going, and we’ve got it pretty much filled.”
Clark joined Tennessee’s staff in the offseason entering the 2021-22 season and was apart of the best four-year stretch in program history.
The Vols won the 2022 SEC Tournament, made it to the 2023 Sweet 16, won the SEC Regular-Season Championship in 2024 and have made back-to-back Elite Eights. Tennessee had made the Elite Eight just one time in school history beforehand.
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Clark was a major part of that success particularly in his role as a stout recruiter. The Kansas City native was the lead recruiter for a number of Tennessee stars in recent years, most notably transfers Dalton Knecht and Chaz Lanier over the last two years. Losing Clark is undoubtedly a blow to Tennessee’s program and its recruiting.
“Everything we do at Tennessee, it’s not a one-man recruit. We’ve never done that,” Barnes said. “We’ve recruited as a staff. We believe in that because we just feel — like situations like this. We want everybody that we recruit to know everybody on our staff and crisscross for that.”
The remaining assistant coaches on Tennessee staff include associate head coach Justin Gainey, Gregg Polinsky, Bryan Lentz and Lucas Campbell. With a spot to fill, Barnes could potentially turn to his longtime assistant and former Texas head coach Rodney Terry.
Clark joins Darian DeVries’ staff at Indiana as the former West Virginia coach left Morgantown after just one year to become head coach at Indiana earlier this offseason. Prior to his time at Tennessee, Clark had spent time as an assistant coach at Illinois-Chicago and Austin Peay.
