CLEMSON – Dylan Faulkner was perfectly content to play basketball at Samford University for another year.

The big man, a junior last season, averaged 18 points and 9.5 rebounds per game with the Bulldogs, earning first team All Southern-Conference honors in his lone season in Birmingham, Ala. Before his time at Samford, he saw similar success at Lipscomb University, averaging over 10 points and five rebounds per game.

However, when the transfer portal opened last spring after his more-than-successful season came to a close, Faulkner’s coach brought him in for an honest conversation. 

Maybe even unbeknownst to the 6-foot-10 scorer, it was time to leave the mid-major nest.

“(Faulkner) didn’t want to leave,” Samford coach Lennie Acuff told ESPN 97.7 in Huntsville, Ala. “But the amount of money he could make, I told him, ‘Dylan, you can’t come back.’”

“So he’s gonna go and make a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money,” Acuff added. “And I’m real happy for him.”

Around six months later, playing in his first regular season game for Clemson, Faulkner proved Acuff right. In the Tigers’ 85-72 win over Stetson at Littlejohn Coliseum Monday, he finished with a team-high 11 rebounds, as well as five assists and 16 points. He was the only Tiger player to finish with a double-double.

Within forty minutes of play, Faulkner proved his competence at the Power Four level– not just with his scoring abilities, but in his proficiency with running Clemson coach Brad Brownell’s offense.

Despite playing his first official minutes in a Clemson uniform, Faulkner appeared right at home, finding his teammates for bounce passes off of back cuts to the rim and orchestrating much of the Tigers’ pick and roll strategies.

“He’s a quarterback in our offense, along with Ace (Buckner) because we play through the high post so much,” Brownell said of Faulkner after the win. “The ball’s in his hands. So, he’s talking guys through things and he’s helping guys.

“To be frank, sometimes when you have transfers and you have new guys, they don’t pick it up as quick. And obviously he has, and so he certainly has found his voice, both with direction of our team, but also off the court just coming to practice every day excited and working and being competitive and knowledgeable.”

Both in his time at Samford and Lipscomb, Faulkner worked in similar offenses, using his size and athleticism to command the ball at the high post and distribute it to cutting teammates. Though the transition to a different level of competition was a process, Faulkner was always able to lean back on what he knew– playing an efficient brand of basketball.

“I’m just trying to bring my knowledge of this offense and the games that I’ve played, right?” Faulkner said. “I feel like I can help this team kind of orchestrate, help people get to the right spots and help the offense flow more smoothly.”

However, Faulkner’s opening night splash did not just come on the offensive end. The 22-year-old also added a team-high two blocks and a steal, keeping Stetson from cutting into a large lead that Clemson built up in the first half.

“I feel like I’d like to be a safety net right there around the rim, give some guys some confidence that if they get beat, there’s somebody coming to help,” Faulkner said.

Ace Buckner, the Tigers’ point guard sitting beside Faulkner in his postgame media availability, only had a few words in response. 

“He definitely helped me out a little bit,” Buckner said with a laugh. 

Clemson’s star guard was not alone in that assertion. Faulkner elevated his entire team on both sides of the floor, finishing with a team-high 20 in the plus-minus category. This means that no other player consistently made Clemson better than Faulkner did Monday night.

And as the season progresses, Brownell will likely rely on the former Samford Bulldog for more of those performances.

“That’s what we saw when we recruited him and why he was such a priority for us,” Brownell said.

When listening to Brownell’s high compliments of his new post player, all of the grateful Clemson fans can thank Samford’s Lenny Acuff for pushing Faulkner to the Upstate of South Carolina.