Candidates the Cajuns should consider for MBB coach

[ManAboutTown]

_ We are not talking about baseball or softball, those are completely different sports. Plus in Softball at least we are an Elite program and have Louisiana and East Texas to draw from. _

no, I meant the league is not declining in those sports.

[Tiredof theBS]

_ Do you have no interest in Billy Kennedy??? Or do you think that we cannot get him... _

Why would Kennedy want to come here? His basketball team has a private 3000 square foot strength and conditioning center, and has a top notch staff. They play in a basketball "pit" that also happens to hold 8000+. His team currently stands at 25-3, 13-0 at home. He has 6 players averaging 10 points per game, 5 of which will be back next year, 3 of which are freshman or sophomores. Three of his starting 5 will be back on the Racer Arena Court next year.

Do I think we can get him? Nope, now let's move onto our second choice which should be Felton or Gilispie. Both come with baggage. Both will use us as a stepping stone. Both will bet us into the round of 32 or sweet 16 in the next 3 seasons. If we can't get them I suggest we "settle" for Pierre which would be a great first choice. Going after those three we can't lose.

[SlappyCajun]

_ What you are saying is that UL would recruit in a vacuum. We can not sign all of the top basketball players in the state. LSU will grab whoever they want like they do in every sport.

Winning consistently on a national level is winning against tough OOC opponents, not Centenary or Mobile but teams that we beat as recent as 2004 like Miss St. and other program like them. UL was a TOP 10 program and has great tradition. I want the Cajuns to be like Gonzaga or Butler or any mid major that is consistently in the Top 25.

Tyren Johnson was a project player who worked his ass off to become the player he has turned in to. He was not highly recruited out of high school. You can not build a program around project players. Ryan Francis is dead, shot by a banger. Kenneth Cooper and Bo Spencer would help the Cajuns, but tell me who would you replace them with? Where is your bench players? Louisiana can not supply enough basketball talent to supply more than 1 school on a national level.

As far as enough talent to win the Belt which is the 21st rated conference if you go by RPI is not saying much. The Belt sucks as a whole conference and has been steadily declining in all sports besides football. _

I agree about Tyren, but he is the player of the year in the league, whether he wins it or not.

Ryan Franics is Rick Majerus taking the USC job away from being a Cajun.

Kenneth Cooper almost came here.

Storm Warren and Bo Spencer if Butch Pierre or Tim Floyd is the coach would probably be Cajuns.

All I'm saying is that at a a school like UL, you have 13 scholarships. Does Louisiana produce a little over 3 players per year that are of a caliber that can help us compete nationally. I think the answer is yes.

Also the original argument was based on the fact that you said Louisiana was crap in basketball. It is not. If you think it is, you must not follow basketball in the other 49 states, because we stack up fairly well.

[Turbine]

Bad: UL's treatment of African American coaches might scare away potential prospects. Playing against his old school might not interest him. He's still behind WKU in the SBC. The Cajuns are barely the best team in their division.

As mentioned UL's treatment of African American coaches has been impeccable especially considering at one point UL was one of only two D1 Schools in America with two African Americans as head coach.

Non basketball: Baldwin was once an Associate Head Coach and Defensive Coordinator under Denardo who -by the time UL hired him- had quietly been demoted several times to the point was his status was that of being a position coach. Hiring him as a head coach was treating him extremely nice. Letting him go early was also a nice thing to do before he totally ruined his reputation. If he had wanted to coach again -he didn't- he could have. Three years of failure is not insurmountable. If he had been retained for say 6 years he would have been mistreated.

I agree Evans was thrown under the bus -in a single instance- with a public press conference promising to get to the bottom of the Anthony Johnson situation. The message was clear Evans was on trial. However when finally cleared of wrongdoing there was no press conference to clear Evans, he was exonerated quietly. Still in total he was treated nicely at UL.

If you are saying UL has kept some coaches to long, then yes a few have been mistreated.

Now I am going to spin your statement. By being overly nice to Lee and Rogers UL has made the job less attractive to coaches in general. With each losing season sanctioned by the school, the UL job has become considerably less attractive. Attractive jobs bring intangibles above and beyond money. But when you let programs slide the price a school must pay to get a quality head coach (one that will get you to where you want to be) rises dramatically. So yes the nice treatment certain coaches have received very well could "scare away potential prospects."


jmo

[cajun4life]

_ what 6 or 7 players he signed that were the best from louisian, maybe top 50 from louisiana _

That is exactly my point Brad, you know as well as I do that Louisiana does not have enough talent to feed all of the schools within Louisiana. Yes we can make a core group of guys from La and win like we did with like Evans did. But we also had guys like Big Mike, Anthony Johnson, Tirus Wade, Orien Green, Brett Smith and Brian Hamilton to name a few who were a huge part of our program. They were major contributors to our basketball program.

We need a coach who can get players of that caliber to come to UL. Does Louisiana produce those types of players year in and year out? Maybe, but they are not coming here out of high school. They may come back like Dewayne Mitchell did but to get them out of high school is a different story.

[cajun4life]

_ no, I meant the league is not declining in those sports. _

The league is declining in baseball, that is a fact.

[cajun4life]

_ I agree about Tyren, but he is the player of the year in the league, whether he wins it or not.

Ryan Franics is Rick Majerus taking the USC job away from being a Cajun.

Kenneth Cooper almost came here.

Storm Warren and Bo Spencer if Butch Pierre or Tim Floyd is the coach would probably be Cajuns.

All I'm saying is that at a a school like UL, you have 13 scholarships. Does Louisiana produce a little over 3 players per year that are of a caliber that can help us compete nationally. I think the answer is yes.

Also the original argument was based on the fact that you said Louisiana was crap in basketball. It is not. If you think it is, you must not follow basketball in the other 49 states, because we stack up fairly well. _

We do not even come close to Houston Metro, Dallas Metro, Chicago, or any other major metropolitan area in the country. Our state as a whole does not even produce as many D1 scholarship athletes as any of those metro ares.

[LifeTimeCajun]

_ The league is declining in baseball, that is a fact. _

no our program has slumped over the past 2 yrs as well as South Al. the rest of the league has gotten better over the past few years

[SlappyCajun]

_ We do not even come close to Houston Metro, Dallas Metro, Chicago, or any other major metropolitan area in the country. Our state as a whole does not even produce as many D1 scholarship athletes as any of those metro ares. _

Once again, not the point. The argument is whether Louisiana produces enough athletes to be consistently successful.

And Chicago kids, aren't clamoring to come down to Louisiana....

[CajunT]

_ what 6 or 7 players he signed that were the best from louisian, maybe top 50 from louisiana _

Gradnigo was listed in Louisiana's Top 10 by two scouting services. There is no top 50 from louisiana, we never had 50 DI prospects in any given year to my memory. But what was Tyren Johnson ranked? How about you and Brett Smith? There are kids out there that can contribute to this program after several years in the program. Brett and you turned out pretty good. The bottomline, academics usually claims 50% of any class in Louisiana. There is never enough talent to feed all the DI programs in Louisiana. Now this is still no excuse for not landing more then one such athlete over the past five years. Winning would have taken care of some of the problem, but that didn't happen.

[VObserver]

_ no our program has slumped over the past 2 yrs as well as South Al. the rest of the league has gotten better over the past few years _

The league as a whole has gone from being a three bid league consistantly among the top 6 conferences in the country down to a one bid league ranked about 15th. That's a big decline, no matter how you read it. Middle and Western appear better than they used to be, but only because UL, USA, UNO and even ULM have gone to c*ap. Tony's teams and USA especially have underperformed horribly compared to their traditions.

[CajunRed]

_ You can say that Bobby may not be a good hire, but to say that Louisiana is a crap basketball state is about the most ridiculous thing ever....

If you can recruit LA and Houston, you can win the Sunbelt every year....


Dwayne Mitchell - Louisiana
Brad Boyd - Louisiana
Tyren Johnson - Louisiana
Laurie Bridges - Louisiana
Antoine Landry - Louisiana
All of LSU's Final Four Team - Louisiana
Greg Monroe - First Round Draft pick and Georgetown's best player, Louisiana
Baylor's Starting Backcourt (Tweety Carter and LaceDarius Dunn) - Louisiana
Marcus Thornton - Hornets starting two guard (Louisiana went to JUCO, because no one thought he was good enough to prop)
Millsap Brothers - Louisiana
Brandon Mouton - (Started on Texas Final Four team - LA)
Karl Malone - Louisiana
Willis Reed - Louisiana
All of Bobby Knights best players at Texas Tech - LA
Perry Stevenson at Kentucky
Carrol Boudreaux, Kevin Brooks, Aaron Mitchell, Eric Mouton
Kevin Figaro, Graylin Warner
Von Wafer (Rockets)
David Benoit
Robert Pack

LA is full of really really good college basketball players. I will argue this all day long. _

So you are saying that if a Louisiana school like UL recruits and signs all of these players, it (or we) can win. Forgive me, but it is pretty naive to think that any one school will sign more than 1 or 2 of the players you listed at one time. You listed players from a 30 year stretch and implied that they would all be available at one time. HOW RIDICULOUS!