Before the fourth-ranked LSU women’s basketball team takes the floor for a game, it relies on the expertise and scouting of assistant coach Bob Starkey.
In addition to running practices, his main role includes breaking down film and creating scouting reports for opponents, which often keeps him up all night after a game.
“Game night is a long night for me,” Starkey said.
A typical night starts with Starkey breaking down the tape from that game, going through and compiling clips with stats, such as deflections, screens set and post touches. This takes about two hours and then Starkey breaks LSU’s next opponent down, looking through eight to 10 tapes and putting more clips together.
“When I get done with that, I’ll type the scouting report,” Starkey said. “Generally, I’ll finish up at about 7 or 8 in the morning.”
By that time, Starkey said the other coaches return, and they look at the scouting report. Players get one, as well as a 20-minute scouting tape to watch back at their apartments, he said.
The long nights do not seem to bother his wife, Sherie, who knows where he is all the time, he said.
“I’m married to the world’s greatest coach’s wife,” he said. “She understands what the job entails, she never complains.”
When he joined head coach Sue Gunter’s staff full time in 1998, Starkey brought the motion offense with him and has had success implementing it with the players.
“Most of what you see offensively is Bob Starkey because he’s the man around the motion offense,” Gunter said.
Forward Ke-Ke Tardy, a senior who has been in Starkey’s system for four years, said when Starkey brought in the motion offense, it really helped the team. Now teams only can hope LSU has a poor shooting night or come into the game unfocused because they run the offense so well, she said.
“He teaches you how to watch basketball and learn something from it,” Tardy said. “I have a better understanding of the game, learning how to move without the ball and how to read opponents strengths and weaknesses.”
Gunter said one of Starkey’s greatest strengths is his ability to break the game down into fundamentals, putting concepts in the simplest form and then teaching it to the players.
“Bob is a man of many talents,” Gunter said. “He does so many more things than just the Xs and Os.”
Starkey admits the Avid system he uses to break down tapes makes his job much easier, and he can store clips and search for particular sequences at will.
Starkey spent 10 seasons on former men’s head basketball coach Dale Brown’s staff and said getting to work with former players Shaquille O’Neal, Stanley Roberts and Chris Jackson was a great experience for him as a coach.
“After he [Brown] retired, I felt I was a better coach, better husband, a better friend,” Starkey said. “That was the type of program he had — it wasn’t just about basketball, it was about a whole lot more things.”
Starkey began coaching basketball in West Virginia, where he later met Gunter when she recruited one of his players. He then moved on as an assistant coach for West Virginia State and Marshall’s women’s team.
Starkey worked as an administrative assistant for both LSU teams before joining the women’s team. He said the move to Gunter’s staff was not difficult because he had experience coaching women before.
“I was very pleased but very surprised,” Starkey said of the offer to change staffs.
Gunter said when the opportunity to bring Starkey on board full time came up, she really wanted him to fill the position on her staff. When he came aboard, he convinced her and the other coaches to implement the motion offense.
“Really he is the guru that’s brought that concept to us and has been very effective for us,” she said.
Starkey’s knowledge of basketball and the motion offense allowed him to write several books, including “The 2-3 Match-Up Defense,” “Motion Offense” and “The Art of being an Assistant Coach,” which he said helped him grow as a coach.
“They’re not on the New York Times bestseller lists, but there’s a nice little niche of coaches that are always looking to get better,” he said.
The media spotlight is not something Starkey particularly enjoys and said he would prefer just sitting in his office, watching film.
“Games are OK, but I love practice. I live for watching tape,” he said. “I love teaching more than anything else in the world.”