Senior captain on Duke's 1991 NCAA championship team. Conestoga HS all-time leading scorer AND rebounder. Played UNLV's George Ackles on Duke's scout team during the week Coach K prepped for the 1991 UNLV upset. Now in McLean, VA, founder and President of CauseNetwork (a 1,000-brand marketplace-for-giving fundraising platform) and long-tenured assistant coach for Langley HS girls varsity basketball. Got a surprise package from Coach K in 2020.
Forward/Center6'10"1987–91
Born Wayne, PA (suburban Philadelphia, Main Line) • Conestoga High School (Wayne, PA), Class of 1987 • Conestoga HS all-time leading scorer AND all-time leading rebounder when he graduated • Inaugural class of the Conestoga HS Athletic Hall of Fame • Full athletic scholarship to Duke • Duke 1987-91, 6'10" Forward/Center, jersey #45 • Four-year career under Mike Krzyzewski, Final Four in every single one of his four years • Freshman 1987-88: 20 G, 4.6 MPG, 60.0% FG, 32 points — 1988 Final Four (lost national semifinal 66-59 to Larry Brown's Kansas team led by Danny Manning in Kansas City) • Sophomore 1988-89: 30 G, 4.7 MPG, 70.6% FG (24-of-34, the most efficient season of his college career), 58 points — 1989 Final Four (lost SF in OT to Andrew Gaze and Seton Hall in Seattle's Kingdome) • Junior 1989-90: 17 G, 6.6 MPG, 78.9% FT, 31 points — 1990 NCAA national runner-up (lost the title game 103-73 to UNLV in Denver, largest margin of defeat in title-game history) • SENIOR CAPTAIN 1990-91: 19 G, 1 start, 4.9 MPG, 55.6% FG, 27 points — 1991 NCAA NATIONAL CHAMPION (beat UNLV 79-77 in the Final Four semifinal, beat Kansas 72-65 in the title game in Indianapolis) • Famous scout-team moment: played the role of UNLV's 6'10" center George Ackles for an entire week of practice prep for the 1991 UNLV Final Four upset • Career college totals: 86 games, 148 points, ~439 minutes • Buckley and fellow senior Greg Koubek finished their careers 3-1 at the Smith Center vs UNC with a career-capping 83-77 win on UNC's Senior Day • Named in the North Carolina General Assembly's official resolution recognizing the 1991 Duke championship team • White House Rose Garden ceremony with President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle • Duke undergraduate degree; MBA from Georgetown University (McDonough School of Business) • Career path: Marketing Consultant at MVBMS Advertising → Corporate Vice President at AOL during the AOL Time Warner era → Corporate Officer/Principal at N.E.W. Customer Service Companies LLC (June 2009) → Chief Revenue Officer at TechForward, Inc. (May 2010) → Founder and President of CauseNetwork, Inc. (current) • CauseNetwork is a McLean, VA-based marketplace-for-giving fundraising platform partnered with over 1,000 national brands and supporting over 150 causes; featured on the Discovery Channel • Long-tenured assistant coach for the Langley HS girls varsity basketball team in McLean, VA under head coach Amanda Baker • Daughter Ellie Buckley played at Langley • Coached youth basketball: McLean Maniacs 11-Under Division 1, Matrix AAU Basketball 2017 Green-Buckley • January 2015: at age 46, suited up to play the 6'8" role of opposing star Kelly Koshuta in Langley's practice prep, helping Langley win 36-33 vs No. 13 Madison • 2020: Coach K mailed Buckley a framed photo of the 1991 White House Rose Garden ceremony with a personal handwritten note
Now: Founder and President of CauseNetwork, Inc., a McLean, VA–based marketplace-for-giving platform that routes a percentage of everyday online shopping at over 1,000 national brands to more than 150 causes (America's VetDogs, the Alzheimer's Association, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Special Olympics, and more). Long-tenured assistant coach for the Langley HS girls varsity basketball team in McLean, VA under head coach Amanda Baker. Senior captain on the 1991 NCAA national championship Duke team, where his most famous moment was playing the scout-team role of UNLV's George Ackles during the week of practice prep for the 1991 UNLV Final Four upset. Conestoga HS (Wayne, PA) all-time leading scorer and rebounder; inaugural class of the Conestoga Athletic Hall of Fame. Duke undergraduate, Georgetown MBA. Career path through MVBMS Advertising, AOL, N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, and TechForward before launching CauseNetwork.
Clay Buckley grew up in Wayne, Pennsylvania, the leafy suburb of Philadelphia just up the Main Line, in the kind of public-school basketball pipeline that has been quietly producing Division I prospects for decades. He enrolled at Conestoga High School in the fall of 1983, a tall ninth-grader on a varsity roster, and by the time he walked off the Conestoga floor four years later in the spring of 1987 he had rewritten the school record book. He left Conestoga as the school's all-time leading scorer and the school's all-time leading rebounder, a Philadelphia-area first-team all-state forward, and a Division I scholarship-caliber prospect with the kind of length and footwork that translates to the post regardless of competition level. Years later, when Conestoga established its Athletic Hall of Fame, Clay Buckley would be a member of the inaugural class.
He chose Duke. Mike Krzyzewski's program in 1987 was three years past the painful 1986 national title game loss to Louisville, two years past the Tommy Amaker class, and was about to add freshman guard Quin Snyder and freshman wing Phil Henderson to a roster led by senior guard Tommy Amaker and All-American junior wing Danny Ferry. Coach K's recruiting class for the fall of 1987 added 6'10" Clay Buckley to the frontcourt, 6'4" Joe Cook as the deep-bench guard from Lincoln, Illinois, and a number of other freshmen. Buckley was the tallest member of the class. He arrived in Durham in the fall of 1987 a Conestoga all-time scoring and rebounding record-holder, a Philadelphia-area Catholic-school-killing post player, and a full-scholarship Duke big man at the start of one of the most consequential four-year arcs the program has ever produced.
Clay Buckley is the founder and President of CauseNetwork, a McLean, Virginia–based fundraising platform that lets consumers route a percentage of their everyday online shopping at over a thousand national brands to more than 150 causes. CauseNetwork's partner organizations include America's VetDogs, the American Parkinson Disease Association, United Cerebral Palsy, the Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer's, the MedEvac Foundation International, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Latino Student Fund, and Special Olympics. Supporting CauseNetwork directly supports the marketplace Clay Buckley built to keep money flowing to the causes that need it.