Throughout the NCAA Tournament, the LSU women’s basketball team has proved all of their critics wrong; critics who said the Lady Tigers would not be able to handle their outside distractions while managing a run through the Big Dance.
So far, so good as LSU has advanced to the team’s fourth consecutive Final Four, but a couple of blaring issues need to be resolved in a hurry so Pokey Chatman’s successor can maintain LSU as a dominant program.
Recruiting is the first issue. With nine seniors on next year’s roster, the Lady Tigers must find a big-name to lure big-time high schoolers to Baton Rouge.
Adding to the complications is the off-the-court turmoil plaguing the program. Will parents immediately send their children to the place that was home to the largest women’s basketball scandal in recent memory?
A fourth consecutive Final Four would help recruiting, but schools like the University of Tennessee, Duke University and The University of North Carolina all boast similar streaks, making their programs just as attractive to potential recruits.
The second problem is attendance. The Lady Tigers do not match up favorably with some bigger schools in the nation in attendance, a concern that forced Athletic Director Skip Bertman to meet with Chatman weeks before her resignation to discuss ways to enhance the program.
This season LSU has had an average attendance of nearly 6,000 in SEC games, a number that lags far behind the other elite programs of the country.
Forget Baylor coach and Hammond native Kim Mulkey, who has said repeatedly she will remain at Baylor; the answer to these problems is Van Chancellor.
Chancellor coached for 19 seasons at the University of Mississippi, compiling a record of 439-154, ranking No. 14 in all-time collegiate winning percentage winning nearly 74 percent of his games.
Chancellor has also won at the WNBA and Olympic levels, winning the WNBA’s first four championships with the Houston Comets, while leading the 2004 U.S. National team to a Gold Medal in the Athens Olympics.
At 63 years old, Chancellor’s nearly 30 years of coaching experience would be the stabilizing force the Lady Tigers’ program needs to return things to normalcy both on and off the court, before turning the program over to its long-term successor.
Chancellor’s winning mentality would persuade high school seniors all across the country to play for a coach who is currently a finalist to be nominated for the World Basketball Hall of Fame.
The question then becomes whether or not Chancellor would be interested in returning to the SEC.
“It looks like I’m going to be getting back into college coaching,” Chancellor told the Houston Chronicle on March 15. Right now I’m interested in talking to a number of people about a number of jobs.”
The nation’s best available jobs at this point are at the Universities of Texas, Arkansas and Florida, team’s who have 46 combined wins, which can barely outweigh the 29 the Lady Tigers have earned this season.
For a coach that does not have time on his side, Baton Rouge is the only realistic place for the Louisville, Miss., native to make one last run at the NCAA Championship.
In light of everything that has gone on in the last two weeks the hiring of Chancellor would be a step towards normalcy for a program that has been everything but normal recently.
This is more than likely the last hiring you will make as LSU Athletic Director, Mr. Bertman, you’d better make it count.
—–Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]