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NCAA
Division II's All-Time Winningest Coaches
 Gordon
Gibbons arrived in Atlanta and immediately turned around
Clayton State men’s basketball.
Under
his leadership the third-year Laker coach has led the
program to national prominence and 36 wins in the last two
seasons, including 28 Peach Belt Conference victories,
compared to a 24-40 record in PBC play the prior four
seasons. The program has a conference championship and a
top-5 finish in the last two years, which are the two best
finishes in school’s six years of competing in the Peach
Belt.
The
NCAA Division II’s fourth winningest coach (282-86),
Gibbons has a good shot of reaching a milestone in
2003-04, as he is 18 wins shy of capturing his 300 th
victory. He captured his 250th
win quicker than any other coach in Division II history.
The
Lakers won the 2001-02 PBC Championship with a 19-9
overall and a 15-4 mark in the league. The championship
for Gibbons was his ninth in the past 11 years. Gibbons, a
coaching legend in Florida at the professional, collegiate
and high school levels, enters his third season at Clayton
State.
 Winning
at the national level is not foreign to Gibbons, evidenced
by his 10-year career at Florida Southern, where he had a
246-65 record (3rd winningest Div. II record) and posted
nine 20-win seasons. His success on the national stage at
FSC included six trips to the NCAA tournament, two
appearances in the Elite Eight and one appearance in the
Final Four.
Gibbons
averaged a 25-7 win-loss record at FSC and a 79 percent
winning percentage. His top season came as recent as the
1999-00 campaign when he led FSC to a 32-2 record, a trip
to the Elite Eight and a No. 1 national ranking in the
final poll.
In
the 1998-99 season, Gibbons led his team to a 28-8 record
and a third place finish in the country. Florida Southern
defeated California State University at San Bernardino in
Louisville, KY in the third place game.
His
FSC teams were either the regular season or tournament
champions in the Sunshine State Conference in eight of his
10 years and were ranked in the top 20 six times. He
compiled a 70-13 conference record during his last five
years at FSC.
In
addition to team accomplishments, Gibbons’ players also
excelled academically and athletically. Forty of his 45
seniors graduated under his leadership. In his 12 years as
head coach and three years as an assistant coach, he had
eight All-Americas, two national Players of the Year and
one player drafted by the National Basketball Association.
He also had 22 players play professional basketball in the
United States and Europe.
Gibbons
was named the Division II Bulletin’s National Coach of
the Month in January of 1999 and was a finalist for
National Coach of the Year in 1999-00 by Basketball Times.
He was named the 1995-96 NCAA South Region NABC Coach of
the Year and a three-time Sunshine State Conference Coach
of the Year.
Prior
to coaching at Florida Southern, Gibbons was an assistant
at the University of South Florida for three years and was
named interim head coach of the Sun Belt Conference Bulls
during the 1979-80 season. He has been a head coach at the
professional, junior college and high school level. In 13
years at the high school level, he averaged over 20 wins
per season, leading four teams to Final Four state
appearances.
Gibbons
and his wife Joyce have one daughter, Holly, 27, and one
son, Jay, 24.
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