A longtime Clemson men’s basketball assistant coach is hanging up his whistle.

Dick Bender is set to retire, The Clemson Insider has confirmed.

Clemson later sent out an official release announcing Bender’s retirement.

“I want to congratulate Coach Bender on a great career and well-earned retirement,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said in the release. “Coach Bender has been a part of my life since I was a college student. The mentor he’s been and the example he’s set has been invaluable in my development as a coach. His dedication, integrity and impact on our teams over the years go far beyond just the court. We would not have achieved our level of success without his hard work and professional experience. He’s been an unbelievable mentor to so many players and young staff members over his time here. He has been a tremendous representative of our program and the values we strive to uphold every day. I am grateful for his years of service to our program and wish him, his wife Beth and his family nothing but the best in this next chapter.”

The 2025-26 campaign marked Bender’s 14th season overall as an assistant at Clemson. He has worked primarily with Clemson’s post players and with Brownell on the Tigers’ offense.

After serving as Clemson’s director of men’s basketball operations from 2010-14, Bender returned to the program as an assistant coach for the Tigers in the summer of 2016. He worked two seasons as an assistant coach under Earl Grant, who left Clemson in 2014 to take the head coaching position at College of Charleston. 

Bender served as Clemson’s operations director in Brownell’s first four seasons, 2010-14. He began his college coaching career at DePauw in 1987 under the late Royce Waltman. One of the players he coached there was Brownell.

After his stint with DePauw, Bender served as an assistant coach under former Clemson assistant Ron Bradley at Radford from 1991-97. He was reunited with Waltman as part of the staff at Indiana State and coached with the Sycamores for 10 seasons from 1997-07.

Bender, a native of Grantsville, Md., graduated from Western Maryland in 1986 and earned a master’s degree from DePauw in 1989. He was a two-year letterman and team MVP at Western Maryland.

Bender’s retirement leaves another vacancy for Brownell to fill on his coaching staff, as Billy Donlon recently officially accepted the job as head coach at Eastern Michigan after spending the past four years serving on Brownell’s staff as the associate head coach.

Clemson is coming off a first-round NCAA Tournament exit for the second straight season. This year, the eighth-seeded Tigers fell to No. 9 seed Iowa by a score of 67-61 in the South Regional at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Fla. on March 20.

–Clemson Athletic Communications contributed to this story