BOSTON — Bill Clingan had just watched his son, Donovan, dominate an Elite Eight game in breathtaking fashion. His boy, now a 7-foot-2 man, had so thoroughly terrorized the second-ranked offense in college basketball that Illinois actually looked broken. As Donovan accepted the Most Outstanding Player award for the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional, having led Connecticut to a 77-52 victory and second straight Final Four, his dad’s eyes filled up with tears and fixed on the rafters inside TD Garden.
“I’m feeling … I’m feeling … oh, man, what am I feeling?” he said. “All kinds of stuff. So happy for him, his teammates, his coaches. So happy. But man, I wish she was here. I wish she was here so bad.”
Almost six years ago to the day, on March 27, 2018, Stacey Porrini Clingan, Bill’s wife and Donovan’s mom, died after a battle with breast cancer. She’d been a star herself in college, played in three NCAA Tournaments, scored 1,128 points, grabbed 929 rebounds, blocked 220 shots. Then she passed on the basketball bug to her son, taught Donovan so many of the things he unleashed on the Illini in the regional final. To have seen him play the game they both loved like this?
“My God,” Bill said, “she would be crying. She would be hootin’ and hollerin’….
