LSU women’s basketball coach Van Chancellor was not letting Joni Crenshaw get away again.Chancellor offered Crenshaw a scholarship to play college basketball at Ole Miss in the late 1990s, but the Meridian, Miss., native turned down the award to play at Alabama.Now the two are reunited on the LSU coaching staff, as Chancellor hired Crenshaw as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator April 27.”The second time we recruited her, we got her,” Chancellor said. “When you have that great appearance like she does, you have the players’ attention right off the bat.”Crenshaw said the LSU position was “something she couldn’t pass up,” although she said it was difficult to leave her job as associate head coach at her alma mater after two seasons.”This was an opportunity for me to grow as a coach and be around a staff that is very experienced in what they do,” Crenshaw said. “I want to be a part of a top-25 program that has goals and is doing great things.”Crenshaw’s mother, Hargie, said it was easy to embrace her daughter’s decision to coach the Lady Tigers.”We have known Coach Chancellor for quite some time from when he came to our home to recruit Joni,” Hargie Crenshaw said. “He’s a very nice person, down-to-earth, and we always appreciate that.”Chancellor observed Joni Crenshaw in action as a sophomore at Alabama when he was a commentator for the Crimson Tide’s Southeastern Conference championship against Tennessee, when Crenshaw tore her ACL.”When you watch a player get hurt right in front of you, it’s pretty tough,” Chancellor said.Crenshaw entered the basketball coaching ranks when she was just 23 when she got a call to be the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Troy. She accepted the offer in lieu of a position as a graduate assistant at Alabama.”I was scared to death,” Crenshaw said. “Everything in me wanted to stay at Alabama because I knew the coaches, it was comfortable and I knew everybody there. But something told me to jump into the fire.”Crenshaw coached at Troy from 2002-05 before moving to Louisiana Tech, where she was also assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. She was part of a staff that won two Western Athletic Conference titles in her first two seasons.Alabama came calling again in 2008, this time for Crenshaw to be on the coaching staff.”Every day I had to pinch myself because I couldn’t believe I was walking through those halls and that gym,” Crenshaw said. “But I cried the entire drive from Ruston to Tuscaloosa and for about a week after I left. If anybody else had called but Alabama, I wouldn’t have gone.”Crenshaw left her mark at Alabama as a student both on and off the basketball court. Her 716 career points, 555 rebounds and 103 blocks rank No. 4 in school history, and she was named one of the 10 most influential African Americans on the Alabama campus by the Mentor Fellowship Society as a junior in 2001.”It was very humbling for me because I had no idea I had that type of impact,” Crenshaw said. Crenshaw said one of the most important lessons she hopes to pass on to her players at LSU is to take advantage of every opportunity they have to leave a positive legacy.”If I had been a butthole of a player and been lazy and didn’t work hard, I never would have gotten the call at Troy,” Crenshaw said. “One day when you have to get a job, someone is going to call your coaches and professors, so whether you leave a good impression or a bad one is up to you and what you’ve done.”—-Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected].