South Carolina men’s basketball head coach Lamont Paris completed the construction of his first staff after hiring Tim Buckley as an assistant coach on Thursday.
Buckley is an experienced coach who got his first job back in 1986 as an assistant for Division II Bemidji State. Buckley has served on the staff for six different Division I teams, including a six-year stint as head coach of Ball State.
"Tim and I have had a tremendous mutual respect for one another for a long time," Paris said in a press release. "We have faced off against each other as foes in the Mid-American Conference, as in-state rivals while he was at Marquette and I was at Wisconsin, and as conference opponents in the Big Ten while he was at Indiana. It will be nice to be on the same sideline for a change.”
Most recently, Buckley served as an assistant at UNLV from 2019-2022. During the 2020 season, the Rebels ended the season in second place in the Mountain West conference, the team’s best finish in 12 seasons.
In 2017, Buckley took two years off from coaching to be an NBA scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Buckley’s contract is effective immediately and lasts until March 31, 2023. He will earn a base salary of $350,000 and will have the opportunity to earn a month's salary for either an NCAA tournament appearance or a Final Four appearance.
"I'm thrilled to be joining Lamont and the rest of the staff at South Carolina," Buckley said in the press release. "We both were in the Big Ten at the same time, and I have so much respect for everything he's about. The SEC is one of the best conferences in the country. I couldn't be more excited about the challenge ahead. We're going to make Gamecock Nation proud on and off the floor."