A 10-year show-cause won’t keep Donnie Tyndall out of college basketball after all.
The former Tennessee head basketball coach has been hired as the head coach of the Chipola men’s basketball program according to a report from WJHG News. Since Chipola College is a junior college school, they are not bound by the show-cause handed down by the NCAA, and Chipola Athletics Director Jeff Johnson decided to give the former Tennessee head coach a shot.
Chipola is a JUCO school down in Marianna, Florida that has had a lot of success recently. Brendan Foley was the head coach of the Indians the last two seasons, going 27-5 in his first year as coach and finishing 45-15 overall before leaving the program for the Division I ranks.
Tyndall joins Chipola after a stint in the NBA. After being fired from Tennessee, Tyndall was hired by the Toronto Raptors in 2016 as an assistant coach for their development team, Raptors 905. He served as an assistant for the Detroit Pistons G-League team, the Grand Rapids Drive, after that and was promoted to head coach of the Drive for the 2019-20 season.
Tennessee hired Tyndall after Cuonzo Martin left the Vols to go coach at California. Tyndall was hired by then-AD Dave Hart in 2014, and Tyndall’s Vols went 16-16 in his first and only year as head coach.
After the season, Tyndall was fired amidst an NCAA investigation into infractions Tyndall and his staff committed at Southern Miss. Academic fraud was the heart of the investigation.
In 2016, the NCAA imposed a 10-year show-cause on Tyndall, meaning any team that wanted to hire Tyndall in the NCAA would have to “show cause” for why it shouldn’t be sanctioned for doing so. It was tied for the longest ever show-cause imposed on a head coach by the NCAA.
Despite that, Chipola feels Tyndall deserves a chance.
“We’re proud to hire a guy with Donnie’s resume and feel very fortunate a JUCO program can get a guy like this who’s won at every level he’s been at,” Chipola AD Jeff Johnson told WJHG News. “And we’re anxious to get him down here and get him started in putting his team together.”
Tyndall is expected to be formally introduced as head coach on Thursday afternoon.
Prior to being hired at Tennessee, Tyndall was a head coach at Morehead State for six seasons then was named head coach at Southern Miss for two seasons. He went 114-85 overall at Morehead State and led them to two NCAA Tournament berths. Southern Miss went 56-17 under Tyndall before being forced to vacate all their wins after the NCAA investigation.
Interestingly, Tyndall has a tie to Chipola that likely helped him get hired there. Tyndall served as an assistant coach under Kermit Davis at MTSU, and Davis was once head coach at Chipola himself.
