If she was here to give her Hall of Fame speech, her husband knows what she\u2019d say.<\/p>\n
Read more Teen surrenders Saturday in connection with killings of two men, NC police say<\/a><\/p>\n Barbara Kennedy-Dixon<\/a> was a natural entertainer, so she wouldn\u2019t have a problem warming up the audience at the Women\u2019s Basketball Hall of Fame<\/a> in Knoxville, Tennessee. Maybe she\u2019d crack a few jokes, or dazzle them with that beautiful singing voice that reminded everyone of Whitney Houston<\/a>.<\/p>\n She\u2019d touch on her friends, her coaches, her teammates. Definitely her family.<\/p>\n But her own accomplishments and accolades at Clemson? Good luck.<\/p>\n \u201cShe would\u2019ve talked about something else,\u201d Marvin Dixon said, laughing. \u201cShe would\u2019ve moved it in a different direction.\u201d<\/p>\n When he speaks at the Hall of Fame on behalf of his late wife on Saturday, though, Marvin Dixon said he\u2019s excited to tell a national audience just how special her Clemson basketball career was.<\/p>\n Forty-four years after her last college game, Kennedy-Dixon, who died of cancer in 2018 at age 58, is still the ACC\u2019s all-time leading scorer<\/a> with 3,113 career points.<\/p>\n No man or woman in league history has come close to breaking her total. She set dozens of additional Clemson and ACC records from 1978-82 and had a long career at her alma mater after her playing days as a coach and administrator.<\/p>\n And when she\u2019s inducted into the Women\u2019s Basketball Hall of Fame as a posthumous veteran honoree this weekend, it\u2019ll be another nod toward a legacy that looms large. Kennedy-Dixon, her husband likes to say, is \u201cstill changing lives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe never met a stranger,\u201d Dixon told The State. \u201cWe talk about people giving the shirt off their backs and stuff like that \u2014 that\u2019s her. She had a servant\u2019s heart.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy-Dixon is the greatest player in Clemson women\u2019s basketball history, and it\u2019s not a stretch to call her the greatest athlete in Clemson history. She was that good.<\/p>\n A dominant post presence, Kennedy-Dixon was a two-time first All-American, a three-time first-team All-ACC player and a two-time ACC Tournament MVP.<\/p>\n During her senior year at Clemson, she averaged an ACC-record and nation-leading 29.3 points per game while also setting a league record for rebounds per game (12.9) and scoring the first basket of the inaugural women\u2019s NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n Had the NCAA sponsored women\u2019s basketball her entire career, she\u2019d rank as a top 10 scorer in the organization\u2019s history<\/a> \u2013 despite never making or attempting a single 3-pointer, which wasn\u2019t adopted until four years after she graduated.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the craziest part,\u201d Marvin Dixon said.<\/p>\n After college, Kennedy-Dixon played two years in Italy and one season for the Virginia Wave in the short-lived Women\u2019s American Basketball Association<\/a> (WABA).<\/p>\n By the time the WNBA<\/a> started in 1996, though, she was in her late 30s and deep into her off-court career with Clemson. She never got a real shot at being a pro, but Kennedy-Dixon never held any ill will about it.<\/p>\n In a 2011 interview looking back on her time in the WABA<\/a>, she said she and other college and professional players of her era felt a responsibility to push the game forward for the next generation.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was an opportunity to grow women\u2019s basketball, and we were pioneers,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cI\u2019d never trade the experiences I\u2019ve had in my athletic career.\u201d<\/p>\n As much as she loved playing at Clemson, she loved working there even more.<\/p>\n Kennedy-Dixon held all sorts of roles across 31 years in Clemson athletics: assistant coach and director of operations for women\u2019s basketball, compliance, academic services. From 2005-14, she was the school\u2019s senior woman administrator.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen she went back to Clemson, she did it not just to coach but to be effective in young people\u2019s lives,\u201d Marvin Dixon said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what she did.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more Charlotte severe weather threat: \u2018Damaging\u2019 60 mph winds possible, NWS says.<\/a><\/p>\n Women\u2019s basketball players still talk about the life lessons they got from \u201cCoach B.\u201d The school\u2019s rowing team named a boat after her. Former Clemson men\u2019s basketball star Tree Rollins<\/a> credits her for pushing him to complete his degree through the department\u2019s Tiger Trust program almost 40 years after he left campus.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a mentor to all of them,\u201d Dixon said.<\/p>\n Kennedy-Dixon paired that immense pride in her work with a \u201clife of the party\u201d vibe when she wasn\u2019t on the clock and relished time spent with friends and family.<\/p>\n Around Christmas, she\u2019d stay up all night concocting gag gifts to give to family members along with their regular gifts. She found it particularly funny when someone besides her was the first to fall asleep at a family function.<\/p>\n She\u2019d often laugh so hard she\u2019d end up laying in the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a lot of fun,\u201d Dixon said. \u201cA whole lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy-Dixon was also a talented singer. She once gave such a powerful rendition of the national anthem before a Clemson-UNC men\u2019s basketball game that Hall of Fame Tar Heels coach Dean Smith<\/a> walked over to shake her hand afterward.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is one of the top showings of respect<\/a> I have ever seen for a Clemson athlete,\u201d former Tigers sports information director Tim Bourret wrote of that moment.<\/p>\n When Kennedy-Dixon had a bout with Hodgkin lymphoma<\/a> in college, doctors treated her neck area with radiation and she continued on with her prolific career.<\/p>\n When lingering side effects from that treatment caused her to have a stroke about 30 years later, she was back at work in six months, a remarkably quick recovery time.<\/p>\n And when she was diagnosed with a rare, fast-growing form of lung cancer<\/a> despite not being a smoker, she fought the disease even harder.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a real trooper,\u201d Dixon said. \u201c… It was just unbelievable, her strength.\u201d<\/p>\n After her cancer diagnosis and despite being weakened by chemotherapy, Kennedy-Dixon still drove herself into work for the part-time job she insisted on keeping with Clemson after she retired. She still sang in her church\u2019s choir. She still visited sick friends and brought them meals, despite being sick herself.<\/p>\n In one of her final public appearances, she gave a rousing speech<\/a> at halftime of a Clemson basketball game and promised she\u2019d fight cancer \u201cuntil the end.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t ever quit,\u201d she told a crowd at Littlejohn Coliseum. \u201cDon\u2019t ever quit.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy-Dixon died on July 23, 2018. She was 58 years old<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her legacy lives on. She\u2019ll have dozens of supporters on site for her posthumous induction into the Women\u2019s Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday in Knoxville, including her husband, her children Jalen and Jasmine, a group of former Clemson teammates and coworkers and friends from her hometown of Rome, Georgia<\/a>.<\/p>\n A few years ago, Marvin Dixon also pitched Tiger Moving Company<\/a> on putting his wife\u2019s name on one of its trucks. The Upstate South Carolina company is run by Clemson alums, and each of its orange and white moving trucks features the name of a prominent Tigers athlete. But at that point, it didn\u2019t feature any female athletes.<\/p>\n Tiger Moving happily obliged. Now, when Dixon\u2019s driving around the area, he\u2019ll often see the company\u2019s \u201cBarbara Kennedy\u201d truck parked outside a house or apartment complex, workers filing in and out as they help someone move.<\/p>\n For a woman with a \u201cservant heart,\u201d it\u2019s a pretty spot-on advertisement.<\/p>\n For Marvin Dixon, it\u2019s a sign from God that his wife\u2019s still making an impact.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll see that truck around town all the time,\u201d he said. \u201c… I\u2019ll take a picture of it, I\u2019ll send it to the family and I\u2019ll say, \u2018Barbara\u2019s still changing lives.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 10:12 AM<\/span> with the headline “Barbara Kennedy-Dixon was a Clemson legend. How her legacy goes beyond basketball.” <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n