Cliff Ellis (born December 5, 1945 in Marianna, Florida) is an American college basketball coach, currently the head coach at Coastal Carolina University. His 547 victories rank him 29 th on the list of all-time career coaching victories in Division 1 basketball. He was national coach of the year in 1999 at Auburn, when his Tigers won 29 games and captured the school’s first SEC championship in 40 years. In 1990 he coached Clemson to its only ACC title in history and his South Alabama teams won Sun Belt Conference regular-season championships in 1979, 1980 and 1981. At both Clemson and South Alabama he holds school records for coaching victories and he is the second-winningest coach in Auburn history.
Ellis is a musician, an author and a gourmet cook. He's even been an ostrich farmer. He and his music group, the Villagers, were one of the Southeast's hottest acts in the mid-1960s. Before he'd ever coached a college game, he had published a book on the 1-3-1 zone press.
