HIGH POINT – Flynn Clayman finally has a bit of a break.
After a whirlwind March highlighted by his team’s second straight conference tournament title and its first-ever NCAA Tournament win and a busy April reloading the roster, Clayman can finally relax.
“It’s become year-round, you know,” he said last week in his office in the Qubein Center. “That’s why if you get the roster done, then May is downtime.”
It’s a well-earned break for Clayman after a meteoric first season as the head coach of the men’s basketball team at High Point University. Two years after joining Alan Huss’ staff as associate head coach, the program was his.
And he took it to new heights — a program-record 31 wins, a third straight Big South regular season title, a second straight tournament title, another trip to the NCAA Tournament and perhaps the biggest moment in program history.
“Obviously it’s a big relief when you win a conference tournament,” Clayman said. “When you’re having a great season at this level, you always have in the back of your head: ‘How is this going to end? Are we the one bid or not?’
“So that’s a big relief. And then for the Big South to have it the week early is kind of nice, too. You punch your ticket and you’ve got a week of kind of a victory lap. Selection Sunday, that’s just a ton of fun — they put on a great show here.
“Then obviously the tournament this year was another level with the upset. And everything that came with that was just a whirlwind.”
The Panthers — who had never played in the NCAA Tournament prior to 2025 -were picked as the No. 12 seed in the West, taking on fifth-seeded Wisconsin in the first round in Portland’s Moda Center.
In front of a huge crowd of supporters, High Point upset the Badgers on a last-second layup by Chase Johnston.
“You grow up a fan before you get into the business of this, just being a March Madness fan as a kid and doing brackets and all that,” Clayman said. “To have your little piece of history and see your team you coached your first year be a team that’s probably going to have plays on the montages before the tournament for years to come, it’s just surreal.
“It reminds you of the fun part of it. This is business and it’s becoming more and more like pro sports and all that. But really it’s why we’re all doing it, including the players.”
Suddenly the Panthers were center stage in the spotlight — the underdog in a tournament that loves underdogs.
“For me personally I don’t like to see myself on TV all the time, so I just kind of turned it off as much as I could,” Clayman said. “I was doing the interviews. And everywhere you’re kind of walking in the hotel or just around town and you’re getting noticed all of a sudden. So that’s different.
“It was non-stop interviews, non-stop attention for two days. You have this next level of attention when you make the tournament. But then when you win — and it was the first games of the first day. So you had that whole day and there were no other big upsets. You just add all that up and it was just a ton of attention.”
The Panthers very nearly toppled fourth-seeded Arkansas in the second round as well. At the end of another very strong season, Clayman discussed publicly the challenge Mid-Major programs face in the era of NET rankings.
Critics say the system discourages High-Majors from playing Mid-Majors. Higher-ranked teams often don’t get much out of playing lower-ranked teams — particularly good teams like High Point — so they avoid them.
Clayman voiced his frustration in trying to build a competitive schedule.
“I wanted our guys to have the respect,” he said. “And I really want the fans to get the games they deserve. I just think there’s a little too much guesswork with the metrics — well, the computers say that this team would beat this team. But we don’t see enough of those teams playing each other to truly know.
“Arkansas just won the SEC tournament. Wisconsin beat the national champs and beat a number of other teams in the top 10 in the country. They weren’t just some team in the Big Ten. What would we look like if we had played some of the lower teams in the Big Ten or on our home floor?
“The more we play each other, the better. We’ve reached out to every single High-Major in the country now. We’ve got one that’s saying they probably will play — one out of everybody. And this is the third year in a row that’s happened. You just get to a point where you say: All right, what do you want us to do?”
In the aftermath of his team’s success, Clayman also became a name fans floated for potential jobs around the country.
“That was all part of the whirlwind. It was like: Life’s just changed some,” Clayman said. “But High Point is such a good setup that I think it’d take something truly remarkable to actually leave here. I’ve bounced around a lot as a player to value what we have here.
“People ask me what my dream job is and this is pretty close to my dream job. It just happens to be my first job — but it still is like a dream job.”
Now the Panthers start looking toward next season — summer workouts begin the first week of June. High Point returns a handful of key players — including notable contributor Cam’Ron Fletcher — and adds five from the transfer portal.
“I think the program’s at a place where it’s like: All right, we’ve built up a ton of regional attention and some national attention with people who really love college basketball, but not your casual college basketball fan nationally,” Clayman said.
“I think now we’re at a point where we can play a few of these games, like the Washington State game. We’re going to try to get some more games where nationally people are paying attention to what we’re doing.
“So that part’s going to be fun. You’re not like a regional success story anymore. You’re a hidden gem — kind of like America’s team, like they were saying in the tournament. That’s going to be fun to build on and see if we can get back to the tournament.”
