When the Tigers fired Amanda Butler in March, they went after Poppie, then at Chattanooga, to replace her.
Clemson will be an entirely different beast. And he knows it. But that doesn’t mean he’s not optimistic about the future. Butler finished 81-106 in her six seasons with Clemson. She led the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament her first season in 2018-19 with a 20-13 record. The Tigers even won a first-round game.But at least Butler got Clemson there once. That appearance snapped a 16-year stretch without an NCAA Tournament appearance that went back to the program’s most successful coach, Jim Davis.
The Tigers failed to make the NCAAs in Davis’s final three seasons, and after that Cristy McKinney, Itoro Coleman and Audra Smith all took their shots as head coach but none of them had a winning season before Butler took the reins.