You my friend are missing the point Brady is taking too many chances on head cases. You mentioned Tony Gibson. Tony Gibson quit because of playing time. He didn't flunk out. Sure his grades weren't good but that was the year before. He would still be on the team if he wouldn't have left for more pt. No one is breaking down the door to come here but it doesn't hurt to attempt to bring in better players. Instead we do families a favor. We sign Garrett Temple because his dad and brother played for LSU. Instead we recruit two average juco players (Spencer Ford who just got kicked out of JUCO and a high school teammate of Darnell Lazarre's.) The only top recruit we are picking up is Glenn Davis. Sure Brady picked up a great class last year, and I commend him and the coaching staff for doing so. But the question is can he keep it up???? Sure doesn't look like it. Are you guys commending Brady for Shawnson Johnson, JuMichael Young, Tim Bush, Tony Gibson, etc. Didn't think so.
Tony Gipson gets suspended from the team for academic reasons, comes back the next year and expects to just walk right back out onto the court? BS. He let his teammates down and he had to pay the price. I'm sick of people talking about Johnson. He was a five-star risk. If Brady would've let him get away during recruiting then all of ya'll would've been claiming the sky is falling. JOHNSON WALKED OUT DURING HALFTIME. I don't know a 5th grade bball coach who would've let him stick around. He was complaining about playing time in his first year here and we hadn't even gotten to SEC play. He begged to be let back on the team, but Brady refused. I COMMEND HIM FOR THAT. Tim Bush- Who cares JuMichael Young- Do you really think he'd be starting now? No.
That's four guys in two years and five in three with Tasmin. Do you really want me to go back to Stromile?
Brady is a very good recruiter. He is a horrible coach, but none the less he is a good recruiter. It would have been impossibe for him to land Duhon. He is no more than Dale Brown reincarnated. Also his recruiting is all in thanks to Butch. Well Brady has an excuse to put the blame on. This year it will be because his best player doesn't want to play for him. Who would want to play for the grimace. Two of my best friends played for Brady and if he was drowning i do not know if they would help him.
U guys All you guys notice is the good that Brady does. Sure he didn't have much to start with. But he's done a piss poor job of recruiting guys with characater. And all of you are right about Shawnson Johnson, JuMichael Young, Tony Gibson, Tim Bush, etc. They were guys with no determination, desire, will. They all wanted glory "Now". But, Brady is the one that recruiting them. Not me and you. We had a great recruiting class last year. But it needs to continue. This whole post was about this year's class. It' sucks. One quality player in Glenn Davis. That's it. Enough said!
I don't know why we didn't recruit Millsap. I've seen him play for Tech and he is a BEAST! Plus, he played in HS with Antonio Hudson. But another thing; we had our low post locked down this year with Lloreda and signing Bass. Maybe we thought Bass was enough low post presence. Chris Duhon- Duke or LSU? Who would you play b-ball for? Duke has how many national championship and Final Four banners hanging from the ceilings? We were what, on probation? You decide. I hate to admit it, but Duke is the top men's b-ball superpower in the country right now. No contest there. Marcus Fizer, like another poster pointed out, was already plugged in with Tim Floyd while Floyd was at UNO, then recruited to Iowa State by Floyd. We signed Fizer's teammate, Renaldo Bratton. I was in HS about that time and Arcadia was one of our big rivals. Bratton was the real force on that team; Fizer was over-rated, he was all offense. Our slow, skinny, white center got a double-double against him; Bratton's sharp-shooting was what killed us in that game. Of course, Fizer must've had more upside in college, because I never saw or heard from Renaldo Bratton again. He must've washed out once he got to LSU. All the other's left the state (or in Jerald Honeycutt's case, went to Tulane) during the Dale Brown decline (1993-97) or the darkest years of probation (97-01, lit up only by the Sweet 16 year in 2000). Keep in mind as well that LSU is not known for great basketball (even with Dale Brown, we never won a national title and the program never got out of the shadow of football, and never will) and as Louisiana's reputation as a fertile recruiting ground for basketball talent has grown, LSU has not matched that with growth in stature of our men's b-ball program. Other programs have been here recruiting before us as well; Arkansas has been recruiting North Louisiana for years, landing such players as Sergio Gipson (Farmerville), Brandon Dean (Ouachita of Monroe), and Scotty Thurman (Ruston). Even Louisiana Tech landed great players like Karl Malone (Summerfield) and P.J. Brown (Winnfield) and Mississippi State got in on it by taking Kevin Zimmermann (Wossman of Monroe). This is not a John Brady problem; even Dale Brown overlooked North Louisiana. I can't remember one North Louisiana player he signed in his last decade at LSU other than Bratton from Arcadia. At least Brady signed Stromile Swift and Shawnson Johnson from Shreveport. Attitudes and goals at LSU about basketball recruiting have to change big-time before we can start getting these players. Does that mean a coaching change? I don't know. It does mean that our recruiting tactics and focus must change as a program, regardless of who is coach. The talent is here; all our needs can be met in the state. We just have to secure it by becoming a much better program and recruiting better on our own turf. I will say this for Brady; this year's recruiting class, even if Spencer Ford doesn't make it here, is very good (maybe Top Five) and has a lot of homegrown talent. Tasmin Mitchell, Glenn "Big Baby" Davis, Garrett Temple (who is gonna surprise some people once he's here at LSU, I can promise you that), all from the Baton Rouge area, make it a great class. Bass and Darrell Mitchell are also key players we needed to get. If we can qualify all these players and if they stick with the team and the system, we are gonna be very, VERY good in two years. Let's just all wait and see how it plays out.
NO tasmin this year Tasmin is only a junior, we won't get him until next year. Only reason we are getting him is Butch Pierre' is his god-father. LOL. This year's class is not that good, except for Glenn Davis.
Another thing; I don't shed any tears, nor do I knock Coach Brady too hard, for the players who've quit the team. The only one I would ever think twice about, if it indeed plays out this way, is Jaime Lloreda. Let's review: Tony Gipson- Got himself academically ineligible, then when he requalifies, expects to be handed a starting job? A tad unrealistic, wouldn't you say? Shawnson Johnson- Quit on the team during halftime of an early season, non-conference game because of lack of PT. Are you kidding me? If I'm Brady, my stance is the same; you walk out on this team in the heat of battle, you can just keep walking. Tim Bush- Don't know enough about him to comment, but I have heard enough to surmise that he fits the pattern of players who quit under Brady. JuMichael Young- Kicked off the team for being a thug. Now thuggish behavior alone won't get you kicked off; Lloreda got in a fight in practice last year. But Lloreda APOLOGIZED and made it up to the team. But Young was an unrepentant thug. And now he's being a thug up at La. Tech; there is talk on their board that he will be the next player kicked off their basketball team (news flash folks: John Brady isn't the only men's basketball coach in America who throws players off his team). He's been thrown out of one game already this year for the Bulldogs. Sorry, I think we can do without that. Have I left anyone out. They probably fit the pattern. Brady is "old school." He's not a player's coach, he's an authoritarian. It's either his way or the highway. Some guys can't handle that. But I will tell you this; while Brady's been here, our graduation rates and team GPA is up, disciplinary problems are down. Is this not a good thing? To me, that is important.
So that leaves us with? All these guys gone that leaves our team with 9 scholarship players. 4 freshman scholarship players - Ross, Brandon, Tack, and Darnell. 1 scholarship sophomore in Darrell Mitchell, who right now seems to be the back-bone of the team. 1 scholarship player who was a former walk-on - in Charlie Thompson who is a senior and never gets on the floor. 1 scholarship player in senior Jamie Llordea who won't finish the season. 1 scholarship player in junior Antonio Hudson who has been very inconsistant. 1 scholarship player in junior Xavier Whipple who plays very hard but just isn't a true point guard or with that a very good college basketball player. With all that said, Brady recruited many kids that were just not good additions to college basketball programs. He recruited guys that wanted all the glory as soon as they arrived on campus.
