By Will Vandervort.

Sources confirm to The Clemson Insider that Lucas McKay will be the new operations director for the Clemson basketball team.

Sources also tell TCI that Clemson head coach Brad Brownell is looking for a strong recruiter and a high-level assistant coach to replace Earl Grant, who left to be the new head coach at the College of Charleston earlier this week.

From everything we are hearing, it appears James Johnson, who Brownell originally hired back in 2012 to replace former assistant coach—now head coach at Mississippi State—Rick Ray, is Brownell’s top target. Brownell is also talking with several other high-level coaches as well.

From what we understand Brownell is talking to coaches from the Atlantic 10, Conference USA and above to replace Grant.

Johnson was an assistant coach for just a short time at Clemson because he was hired away just after taking the job to be the head coach at Virginia Tech, where he was an assistant for several years. The Hokies let him go as head coach at the end of the season.

Thursday morning, Brownell tweeted that is operations director for the last four years, Dick Bender, was leaving his staff to take an assistant basketball coach position for Grant at the College of Charleston.

McKay has been the video coordinator for Brownell the last four years at Clemson and also worked for Brownell when he was at Wright State and also as a student manager when Brownell was the head coach at UNC Wilmington.

Grant, who also served on Brownell’s Clemson staff the last four years, was officially named the head coach at the College of Charleston on Tuesday. Bender has been inching to get back into coaching the last several years and Grant needs a good Xs and Os coach to build back the program down in Charleston.

Stay tuned to TCI for further updates as they come available.