The next few days will be all about Sue Gunter for the LSU women’s basketball team.
LSU coach Van Chancellor, junior guard Katherine Graham and former Lady Tiger All-American point guard Temeka Johnson previewed the upcoming Sue Gunter Classic at a press conference on Monday. The tournament will take place Tuesday and Wednesday in the PMAC.
The inaugural Classic is designed to honor Gunter, who coached the Lady Tigers from 1982 to 2004 before her death in September 2005 after battling emphysema. She won 442 games while at LSU and 708 overall as a college head coach.
Gunter was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005, and she was elected to the LSU Athletic Hall of Fame this past Saturday.
North Carolina A&T (3-4) plays Louisiana-Lafayette (3-6) to start the event at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. LSU (7-0) will then face Houston Baptist (2-7) at 7 p.m.
The losers of these two games play each other in a consolation game at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The winners face off in the tournament final at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
Chancellor coached against Gunter for 15 seasons while he was head coach at Ole Miss. Chancellor took the LSU job in 2007, in part because the idea of taking over a program Gunter made famous appealed to him.
“She and I were both raised in small, rural Mississippi towns about 50 miles apart, and we just had so much in common,” Chancellor said. “After a game, she was never one to say the refs beat us or we didn’t play good. She would always say, ‘Van, your kids played really well today. Congratulations.’ She was always just the kind of person I wanted to be.”
Johnson, who just won a WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury, played for three seasons under Gunter. She said it was even an honor just to be able to speak about Gunter, let alone play for her.
“I was fortunate to have my paths cross with someone like Coach Gunter,” Johnson said. “You think about the name Coach Gunter, and to me, the first thing that comes to mind is character. And that’s what she tried to instill in us.”
Johnson described Gunter as a players’ coach who was able to adapt to the different generations of women she recruited.
“We never had to change to try to fit her. She basically changed to fit us,” Johnson said. “You don’t really see that. Once certain people get older you just adapt to them, but she did everything she could to try to adapt to us.”
Graham never played under Gunter; she arrived in Baton Rouge in 2007 as a freshman.
But Graham still understands the importance of the event and what Gunter meant to the program.
“It’s a great honor [to play in this event] because we get to carry on her legacy,” Graham said. “She helped build up the program to where it is today.”
 
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