She’s been to 12 NCAA women’s basketball tournaments, including two appearances in the Elite Eight and six in the Sweet 16. She has recorded 666 career wins in 39 years of coaching.
She’s a coaching legend in women’s basketball and a 2000 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Heading into her 21st season at LSU, Sue Gunter still is as friendly and down to earth as anyone on the planet.
“There’s no ego about her,” said associate head coach Dana “Pokey” Chapman, who played for Gunter at LSU from 1987-1991 then joined the LSU coaching staff in 1992. “I think what happens is a picture is painted of this icon, and then kids meet her and she’s like your neighbor next door. She can be your friend, your mother, your coach. She’ll be any of those things.
“For lack of a better way of putting it, she’s just Sue.”
Entering her 39th season as a collegiate head coach, Gunter, 61, still has the competitive fire and drive for women’s basketball that she did when she began coaching.
“She will always say the keep her young,” Chapman said. “She surrounds herself with some good kids in their energy, enthusiasm and their fun. The kids read about her. She’s a Hall of Fame coach. But when you meet her, she’s just coach Gunter.”
Before coming to LSU in 1983, Gunter spent 17 years as head coach at Stephen F. Austin from 1965-1980 after spending the 1963-1964 season at Middle Tennessee State.
Since her arrival in Baton Rouge, the Walnut Grove, Miss., native has led LSU to a 400-210 record.
“She’s a coaching legend, period,” said LSU forward Ke-Ke Tardy. “She was around when women’s sports was not the thing that people seemed to be interested in. There’s no other coach in the country that deserves what she does.”
Having recently notched her 400th career win at LSU, Gunter continues to add to her legacy as one of the greatest women’s coaches of all time.
“Sue Gunter obviously has been a real pioneer in women’s basketball,” said Tennessee coach Pat Summitt. “I’m not surprised at her success, and I’m extremely happy for her. I don’t have a better friend in the profession.”
Gunter never expected to remain head coach of the Lady Tigers as long as she has. She expected to coach at LSU around four to five seasons and then move into an administrative position of some sort.
“Things have a funny way of working out,” she said. “Your destiny seems to have a way of shaping itself, and you go along with it.”
Just as women’s sports have evolved over the last 20 years, in particular women’s collegiate basketball and its exposure, Gunter has seen her coaching philosophy evolve as well. Adaption is the key to a coaches’ survival, she said.
“The kids change, the times change, society changes, values change, everything grows,” she said. “I think the biggest thing we’ve had to do is simply be able to change and stay with the times.”
Gunter openly admits this season’s edition of the Lady Tigers is the most talented team she has ever coached. At 15-1, they are off to one of the fastest starts in school history and heavy favorites to make the NCAA tournament and advance to the Final Four, an accomplishment that has eluded Gunter’s career thus far.
“We all aspire for that,” she said. “I’ll be really honest, if that happens to us … sensational. But there are so many things that have to come together for a team to get to the Final Four.”
Gunter said talent alone will not get a team into the Final Four. It also has to have breaks along the way.
“I think it’s going to be a very good year regardless of where we end up,” she said. “I’ve said this before and I’ll stand by it, if we never win another game in my career, it’s been the greatest ride in the world. There’s no way I could put into words what the game of basketball has meant to me. The quality of life, the lifestyle and the rewards are unbelievable.”