Donnie Tyndall

Donald Joseph Tyndall (born June 14, 1970) is an American basketball coach currently working as the head coach for Chipola College of the NJCAA.

After graduating from Morehead State University in 1993, Tyndall began coaching at the junior college level.

Tyndall played college basketball at Iowa Central Community College and Morehead State and has been a basketball coach since 1994.

His teams are known for pressing and playing an unconventional match-up zone, a highly successful variation of the defensive system employed by coach Rick Pitino at Louisville.

Tyndall began his coaching career at the junior college level, first as an assistant at Iowa Central Community College from 1994 to 1996.

From 1994 to 1996, he was assistant coach at Iowa Central Community College.

He had his first head coaching position in the 1996–97 season at St. Catharine College, where he had 30 wins.

Tyndall had his first head coaching position in the 1996–97 season at St. Catharine College in Springfield, Kentucky.

Tyndall led St. Catharine to a 30–5 record and the school's first-ever NJCAA tournament appearance.

Tyndall moved up to the NCAA level as an assistant coach at LSU, Idaho, and Middle Tennessee from 1997 to 2006.

In 1997, Tyndall earned NJCAA Region 7 National Coach of the Year and Kentucky Junior College Coach of the Year honors.

After his season at St. Catharine, Tyndall got his first NCAA Division I coaching position as an assistant at LSU under John Brady, a position he would hold from 1997 to 2001.

Tyndall helped LSU finish first in the SEC West Division in the 1999–00 season and make the Sweet 16 round of the 2000 NCAA tournament.

This LSU team also featured Stromile Swift, the #2 pick in the 2000 NBA draft.

In the 2001–02 season, Tyndall served as associate head coach at Idaho under Leonard Perry.

From 2002 to 2006, Tyndall was associate head coach at Middle Tennessee under Kermit Davis.

Middle Tennessee had winning seasons all four of those seasons.

Returning to his alma mater, Tyndall was head coach at Morehead State from 2006 to 2012.

Tyndall turned around a losing program into a top performer in the Ohio Valley Conference.

In his first Division I head coaching job, Tyndall served as head coach at his alma mater Morehead State from 2006 to 2012.

Morehead State under Tyndall won the Ohio Valley Conference tournaments of 2009 and 2011 and earned automatic NCAA Tournament bids those years.

Morehead State also made the 2010 College Basketball Invitational.

In August 2010, the NCAA placed Morehead State on two years' probation for violations by boosters.

In six seasons, he had 114 wins and two NCAA Tournament appearances, including an upset of no. 4 seed Louisville in the 2011 tournament.

As a #13 seed, Morehead State upset #4 seed Louisville 62-61 in the first round of the 2011 NCAA tournament.

From 2012 to 2014, Tyndall was head coach at Southern Miss; he was head coach at Tennessee in the 2014–15 season.

Tyndall was the head coach at the Southern Miss from 2012 to 2014.

Southern Miss made the National Invitation Tournament in 2013 and 2014 and finished first in Conference USA standings for the 2013–14 season.

On April 22, 2014, Tyndall was hired as head basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, after spending the previous two seasons as the head basketball coach at Southern Miss.

Tennessee finished 16–16 in what would be Tyndall's only season as head coach.

However, violations of academic eligibility and financial aid rules came to light in 2015, causing Tyndall to be fired from Tennessee after one season.

On March 27, 2015, Tennessee fired Tyndall after the NCAA notified Tennessee officials of possible major violations at Southern Miss relating to academic ineligibility and improper financial aid.

According to a copy of Tyndall's termination letter, Tyndall had lied to Tennessee officials about the extent of the violations on several occasions.

Athletics director Dave Hart said that Tyndall would likely have faced significant discipline from the NCAA for his role in the violations at Southern Miss and would have never hired Tyndall had the true extent of the violations at Southern Miss been known.

Tyndall was the second Tennessee coach to be ensnared in a major NCAA infractions scandal, following Bruce Pearl.

According to ESPN, Hart and other officials were still smarting from Pearl having to sit out eight SEC games for violations related to his own scandal.

They were unwilling to face the prospect of Tyndall facing an equally lengthy suspension.

In 2016, the NCAA found Tyndall liable for the violations, vacating all of his wins at Southern Miss and banning him from the collegiate coaching ranks for 10 years.

Tyndall went 56–17 as head coach at Southern Miss, but in 2016, the NCAA vacated all 56 wins due to academic fraud.

On April 8, 2016, the NCAA imposed a 10-year show-cause penalty on Tyndall, to run until April 7, 2026–at the time, tied for the longest ever imposed on a head coach.