Donovan Clingan’s impact at UConn making high school coach proud: 'Great for Connecticut basketball'

Pacing, squatting and sometimes down on one knee, Tim Barrette spent the late hours of Thanksgiving Day getting worked up in front of the TV, watching the UConn men’s basketball team play Oregon to open the Phil Knight Invitational. Dinner had been consumed. Guests had departed. Barrette, the Bristol Central boys basketball coach, was intensely focused on, and reacting to, every move made by Huskies freshman Donovan Clingan. His wife, Katie, became a bit exasperated. “She says, 'You're coaching!'” Barrette said. “Literally, she goes, ‘I can't take this anymore.’ I said, ‘I can’t help it.’ And then I yelled, 'Watch the back screen on the lob!' … like he can hear me out in Oregon.’” Barrette, in this particular instance, was as emotionally invested from across the country as he was from the sideline over the past four years with Clingan as his team’s 7-foot-2 centerpiece. Bristol Central won 43 games in a row, Clingan was twice named state Gatorade Player of the Year, twice won GameTimeCT Player of the Year, and the Rams capped a magical run last season by going undefeated and winning a state championship. Then Clingan was off to UConn, where in just eight games he has become more than a giant curiosity. He has become a central figure in the Huskies’ rapid rise. Clingan is averaging 9.5 points, 6.9 rebounds, 2.3 blocks and 15.6 minutes for UConn (8-0), which was unranked to start the season and is up to No. 8 in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll. The Huskies roughed up a handful of mid-major opponents at home and then blew away three high-major opponents out west — Oregon by 24, No. 18 Alabama by 15 and Iowa State by 18. Clingan had 15 points and 10 rebounds in the championship game, a 71-53 victory, and was named tournament MVP. “As the PKI went on, I calmed down,” Barrette said. “I knew he could play at that level. I didn’t know he'd have the success he’s had right away. But by the end of the Iowa State game, he looked like he was an All-American. One of the things I said to him [afterward] was, ‘If you had any doubts that you could play at this level, they need to be gone.’ He said, ‘I don't have any doubts anymore, Coach.' If you can play against those three teams out there, you can play against anyone.” Clingan and Barrette remain close. Barrette texts him before every game and at the conclusion of every game, so there’s a message waiting for Clingan by the time he gets to his phone. They then usually speak to one another the following day. Barrette knows the thoughts he might share about Clingan’s play — about any successes or shortcomings of a particular performance — will have already been addressed by UConn coach Dan Hurley and his assistants, “But sometimes just to hear a familiar voice, I thinks helps. We've been together for so long, him and I. I've always said that our relationship was much more than player-coach, and it always will be.” Barrette has attended all UConn home games, though he’ll finally miss one Thursday night when the Huskies play Oklahoma State at Gampel Pavilion. Barrette will be busy opening his 16th season as Bristol Central coach, with the Rams hosting Manchester. “I'm extremely happy,” Barrette said. “I've known it all along, but you have a lot of doubters out there. He didn't play against big enough guys, he didn't do this. Everyone wants to be a naysayer. He's a gamer, and he always stepped up in the biggest moments. … Obviously the coaches from the colleges who recruited him had seen him in individual workouts, beyond game film. Against some of the competition in high school he could do things just because he was big, and sometimes he got away with things. “But the ability to shoot, his passing, I've always said, has been phenomenal and that's been evident in the games so far for UConn, and his ability to move the ball to the opposite wing when the double-team comes. He does a very good job of understanding the flow of offense. He has not forced anything.” Barrette’s basketball life is suddenly so different, of course. Clingan averaged 30.1 points, 18.4 rebounds and 6.2 blocks last season, and he’s just one of nine Class of 2022 seniors lost to graduation. Bristol Central’s next-in-line big man, a 6-8 senior center named Julius Powell who was Clingan’s back-up for three years, tore an ACL a couple of weeks ago and will miss the season. The Rams have lost about 99 percent of their minutes played and production from last season. What a ride it’s been, though. Clingan was one of the most dominant players in Connecticut high school history. He’s the local kid who stayed at the big public high school where his late mother, Stacey Porrini Clingan, had set a school rebounding record in the 1990s, before moving on to the big state university. “New England is the prep school hotbed,” Barrette said. “Everyone leaves. I will tell you I've had a couple coaches, locally, who have talked to me about how their kids have decided to stay — because of Donovan Clingan. ‘Hey, I can make it. I can play Division I basketball from [a public school]. I don't need to move to a prep.’ He's left a mark on Connecticut high school basketball.” Opposing high school teams tried just about everything to stop Clingan, who faced triple-teams and configurations with one defender assigned to be in front of him (denying an entry pass) and another in back of him (denying the lob). Bristol Central mostly faced tightly-packed zones. None of it really worked. Opposing students and fans stuffed into high school gyms to root against him and Clingan dominated much smaller opponents at both ends. Now the entire state’s basketball community is celebrating his accomplishments and potential. Clingan received a standing ovation at the XL Center when he checked into a UConn game for the first time, a surreal moment for him, his family, Hurley and Barrette. “I think he'll be great for Connecticut basketball,” Barrette said. “Being a UConn fan for 30 years, I'd argue they're some of the best fans in the world. That said, there are some pressures that come with that. But he just has the mentality, the perfect mentality, and the want to be successful, that he'll do fine with those pressures. He'll work until he can't.” One of the post players Clingan faced at the PKI was Iowa State’s Osun Osunniyi, a fifth-year player who did a prep year at Putnam Science Academy. Osunniyi turned 24 in October. Clingan, who doesn’t turn 19 until February, has proven to be much more than a big project. There’s so much room to improve, of course, but he is already functional, smooth, aware, seemingly unfazed by the situation. Clingan played high-level AAU ball with the Boston Spartans. He was under the spotlight as a freshman, then about 6 feet 9, and essentially under a microscope the past three seasons while rising well above 7 feet and putting up numbers few CIAC players have. He was usually at his best against top high school competition in front of big crowds, whether it state tournament games at Mohegan Sun Arena or the HoopHall Classic in Springfield, Mass. All the while, he handled an intense recruiting process, committing to UConn in July 2021. Now he’s playing for the school he grew up watching, an hour away from Bristol Central. He’s been dominant on the court, exuberant on the bench, an outgoing freshman of immediate impact. “The first couple games, I was more of a fan, or like a proud dad,” Barrette said. “The last couple, I don't know that my wife could take much more. … For a team that is as good as they are, with the depth that they have, you have to have unselfish guys that buy into a system. He is, to me, a cornerstone of what Coach Hurley is looking for in terms of that. He is a fantastic teammate. In talking to the coaching staff, they can't believe the positive energy that he brings. What an honor and I privilege I had for four years to have that around.” mike.anthony@hearstmediact.com; @ManthonyHearst

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