As he watched Jordan Roper speak at the student athletes’ graduation luncheon on Wednesday, Brad Brownell could not help but feel prideful when he was watching his senior point guard.

Through suffering a stroke which almost ended his playing career, to being benched because at times he was too small to play in the ACC, to making a game-winning shot, Roper has seen and experienced it all in his three and a half years as a member of the Clemson basketball team.

And now, a young man who almost did not come to Clemson, walked across the stage on Thursday at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville to receive his degree.

“He is a guy that has truly grown in his appreciation for Clemson,” Brownell said on Thursday. “It was fun to recruit him as a high school senior. He really did not know much about Clemson when I went over there and talked to him. He is over there at Irmo High School in Columbia so you might think he had been to Clemson already before and this and that, but he had not been up here and he did not know much about it. I constantly sold him on what it is about and what it would mean being a kid from this state, and how he would not understand what that degree would mean to him until much later and how long lasting that degree would mean in terms of a forty-year decision, not just a four-year decision.

“I think, having been through Clemson now, it is even better than he thought.”

Thanks to Brownell, his coaches, the teachers at Vickery Hall, the people in the athletic communications department and of course his teammates, Roper embraced all of what makes Clemson unique from most other universities.

“It is great to play in the ACC, the facilities, the academic support and all of those kinds of things, but he goes on and on about the people and how the people really make this place special and make it different,” Brownell said. “He talks about the way people have treated him so well. He has been through some difficult situations with his health, we know that, and he was greatly appreciative of how he was treated and looked out for, by not only by our medical staff and coaching staff, but people in academics that worked with him during that time of difficultly and he has never forgot it.

“He is just a great role model for our guys and I’m really proud of him.”

Though he is graduating, Roper’s time at Clemson is not over. As expected, he plans to finish out the 2015-’16 basketball season, while working in a graduate program in athletic leadership.

Roper’s plans after basketball is to one day run an athletic department himself. He will be working closely next semester with Clemson assistant athletic director Graham Neff and athletic director Dan Radakovich.

“I want to see what they do on a day-to-day basis, and grasp all the concepts they use to make Clemson the best school in the country,” Roper said.

“I have always been into sports, obviously, just playing it growing up. I love my experience at Clemson and I love the people that were around me,” he continued. “I would love to take the experiences I have had and use them to help someone else have an experience like I had. I know the athletic administrative side is really a key in creating these experiences. I really want to go in that direction and have someone else have a great life.”

Roper started working in the Clemson athletic department last summer and in the fall as part of the creative team in the athletic communications department. He worked on producing videos for football and basketball as well as participating and producing things for social media outlets such as twitter, vine, Instagram and Facebook.

“That was an awesome experience working with Nik Conklin, Jonathan Gantt, Phil Sikes, the whole athletic communication department,” Roper said. “Just putting together projects like ‘The Dream’ video that is shown before the (football) game and putting together all the vines and Instagram posts that we make throughout the game just to keep fans posted on what’s going on. It’s awesome.”

Roper also got the opportunity to meet executives from Adobe, Vine and Twitter, while hearing how they praised Clemson and said the program was the best social media athletic department in collegiate athletics.

Then he got experience and appreciate what it is like to be on the other side of the camera, and how much work goes into promoting the teams and the student athletes at Clemson. A lot of Roper’s experiences were through covering the football team.

“It is just a great experience in terms of marketing and promoting events in the future. Obviously, the football team had a great season at 13-0, and hopefully they get a national championship, but I understood the pride and importance you feel as a student athlete when you get on social media, Instagram or twitter,” he said. “When you see yourself, you feel a sense of importance. I expressed that to the athletic communications department. I felt like that was a perspective that I could bring.

“We both learned a lot. I really appreciate the work that they do day in and day out for us, and I’m sure they appreciate what we do.”

And what Roper has done for Clemson and how he has represented Clemson and the basketball program has made Brownell appreciate him.

“I’m really proud of him. He is a terrific young man. He is really a bright guy,” the Clemson coach said.