Former Clemson basketball player Chauncey Wiggins opens up on transfer decision
Chauncey Wiggins already has the date committed to memory.
“February 21st, we play at Clemson,” he said, grinning.
Indeed, that’s the Saturday four months from now when Florida State men’s basketball plays a conference road game against Clemson at Littlejohn Coliseum. And for Wiggins, a transfer forward who spent his first three seasons with the Tigers, it’ll be an extra special one.
“It’s going to be an emotional roller coaster, a little bit,” he said earlier this month.
Wiggins (6-10, 225) started 26 of 34 games last year for Clemson and coach Brad Brownell as the Tigers won a school-record 27 games and made the NCAA Tournament as a No. 5 seed. But he entered the transfer portal shortly after Clemson’s 2025 season ended.
Wiggins announced April 2 he’d be staying in the ACC by committing to FSU and first-year coach Luke Loucks. Loucks, a former FSU player and NBA assistant coach, was hired to replace Leonard Hamilton in March following Hamilton’s resignation.
Earlier this month, Wiggins was in Charlotte to represent Florida State at the ACC Tipoff preseason basketball event and spoke with The State about his decision to leave Clemson after three seasons and why he chose to play at FSU.
Wiggins made one thing clear: There’s no bad blood between him and Clemson.
“It’s straight positive memories,” he said.
Looking back on Chauncey Wiggins’ Clemson career
Wiggins, originally from Covington, Georgia, arrived in Clemson as a three-star recruit and wound up playing a role in the best three-year stretch in Tigers basketball history. Clemson and Brownell won 74 games from 2022-25, their most ever across three consecutive seasons.
Wiggins came off the bench as a freshman, but he was a key rotation player and part-time starter for Clemson’s 2024 team (which reached only the second Elite Eight in program history) and the aforementioned 2025 team.
A tantalizing offensive talent because of his size and shooting combination, Wiggins averaged a career-best 8.3 points per game as a junior and shot 36.5% on 3-pointers during his Clemson career. Limitations as a rebounder and a defender caused him to lose his starting role late in each of the past two seasons.
Wiggins said his junior season was “great” — Clemson, among other highlights, beat blue bloods UNC, Duke and Kentucky — but he decided to enter the transfer portal following a few days of reflection after Clemson’s season ended.
“I just came to the conclusion that I wanted to transfer out,” Wiggins said. “I thought about it for a while. Obviously, it was a hard decision, because I spent three years at Clemson, won a lot of games and got to know a lot of people.”
Florida State quickly emerged as a top transfer destination for Wiggins. Not only could he stay in a conference he was familiar with (the ACC), but Tallahassee, Florida was a manageable drive from his hometown in greater Atlanta and had an intriguing new coach in Loucks.
Loucks said one of his assistant coaches flagged Wiggins to him as a potential portal addition, and he “checked a lot of our boxes.” He said Wiggins’ experience (97 career games and 58 career ACC games) have been a tangible positive for FSU.
And Loucks is hoping to unlock a version of Wiggins Clemson never could.
“The two things that I’m challenging him personally on are the rebounding and defensive ends,” Loucks said at ACC Tipoff. “As I’ve gotten to know Brad Brownell, it’s something that he challenged Chauncey on, too, because he’s got all the skills to play in the NBA someday. But he’s got to be able to rebound the ball and be able to check his guy with some toughness and some physicality.”
Friendships remain, and a return trip looms
That message appears to be paying off: Although the stats won’t officially count, Wiggins recorded a double-double in his first game for Florida State. In an Oct. 16 exhibition game vs. Alabama he went for 16 points and 11 rebounds — three more rebounds than he had any of his nearly 100 games at Clemson.
Heading into his final season of college basketball, Wiggins said that he remains close friends with former Clemson basketball teammates Dillon Hunter, RJ Godfrey and Ian Schieffelin, and he’s on good terms with Brownell, his former coach.
And he can’t wait for his return trip to Littlejohn Coliseum – even though he’ll be trying to beat Clemson this time around.
“When you’re in the moment, you don’t realize how big those memories are,” Wiggins said. “But me and RJ and Dillon, we still talk about the Elite Eight to this day. Like, that was such a great time in our lives. We never really take it for granted. I do miss all those times.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM.
