Torris Bright came to LSU and played with a luxury only few point guards before him had received- the advantage of playing with two big men with NBA caliber talent.
Jabari Smith and Stromile Swift, both current NBA players, led the 1999-00 LSU team to the Sweet 16, with Bright directing the point.
Bright’s stats benefitted greatly from the presence of the two inside dominators, as he averaged 10.0 points and 4.3 assists per game.
He started all 34 games in 1999-00, was third-team All-Southeastern Conference and was named the SEC Co-Freshman of the Year.
With those stats came high expectations, but Bright said he may have been a little bit spoiled by the presence of Smith and Swift.
It showed his sophomore year.
While Bright’s scoring numbers increased to 10.8 points per game in his second season at the helm, his assist numbers went down to 3.8 assists per game.
He also had to deal with playing with four scholarship players, all reasons why his production suffered.
“It was just a bad year for me,” Bright said. “It was one of the down parts of my career. But I use that to motivate me now, but it is also in the past, so I don’t really think about it much.”
Good thing for LSU.
Bright upped his scoring average in his junior year to 13.4 points per game and scored a career high 25 points in a second round loss to Ball State in the National Invitational Tournament.
All of this led to his senior season, when Bright hoped all his hard work would pay off with another trip to the NCAA Tournament.
“I would have been very upset [if we didn’t make the NCAA Tournament],” Bright said. “We worked so hard, and we gave it our all, but life wasn’t over if we didn’t make it to the tournament.”
Luckily for Bright and his teammates, the hard work did pay off as LSU won nine of its final 12 games and earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament, where it will face Purdue on Friday at approximately 2:00 p.m. in Birmingham, Ala.
Bright said he could not envision his career ending any other way.
“This is for the most part how I wanted my career to end,” Bright said. “To make it to the tournament, but you know, I still have a couple of dreams in mind that I wish would come true.”
The NCAA Tournament dream seemed in serious jeopardy halfway through the SEC season.
The Tigers started 1-6 in conference and were counted as dead by both fans and media.
A move in the second half of the loss to Alabama on Feb. 1 may have been a key to the Tigers turnaround, which brought their conference record to 8-8 and secured them a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
With the Tigers trailing by 16, head coach John Brady inserted little used sophomore point guard Xavier Whipple into the lineup in a move that rotated Bright to the two, or shooting guard, position.
Whipple impressed the coaching staff, and since that game, has replaced Bright at the point guard position in the starting lineup.
Bright moved permanently to the two guard position in the starting lineup. While he still plays point, he has flourished at the shooting guard position.
Bright is averaging 12.4 points per game during the move to the shooting position and is shooting 45 percent from the 3-point line.
“I like playing the two,” Bright said. “The two enables me to excel at my game more. It helps me create more and shoot more.”
Like his old teammates Swift and Smith, Bright hopes to make playing basketball a living for himself, whether it is in the NBA or overseas.
“I want to go to the NBA,” Bright said. “That is my dream. Wherever basketball is going to take me, that is where I am going to be. I have been playing basketball since I was five, and it would be a dream for me and my family.”
Bright, who is on schedule to graduate in December, said that while he plans on playing professionally, he still has some unfinished business to take care of at LSU.
“My main focus is trying to get a national championship right now,” Bright said. “We are going to take it one game at a time and focus on the process right now. This team has a lot of chemistry and a lot of leadership, and I am playing around a bunch of great guys. I’ll never forget these guys.”