I think the lack of fan support has a lot to do with it. George Mason U. packed a stadium when their team came home from the regional final victory. LSU was lucky to have 1000 fans outside of the Pmac. Why, you ask? The fans are about as enamored with Mr. Brady as are the elite players in the nation (and some would say state). Basketball which centers on tough defense and rebounding... at the expense of exciting offense... simply isn't fun to watch. Not to mention that this town has quickly grown weary of his well-publicized rifts with players. An interesting anecdote that I read on the other board is that Brady, while at Samford, ran an exciting motion offense which allowed him to come into the Pmac and beat LSU. What's happened to that? Brady might be having as much success as can be expected here given SF's statistics. However, it's undeniable that fan support and recruiting must be improved. I contend that the only way to do that is replace the head coach. Consider this a Mike Shula at Alabama situation. Thanks, coach, for getting us through the lean probation years, and you have had some success here, but it's time to improve the program.
Nah, my deifinition of "next level" is to have a program that routinely makes the NCAA tourney and occasionally make a deep run in the tourney. There are a number of programs who do that. My point is simple. Brady's success would be unacceptable for the LSU football and baseball coaches. Those programs have a higher standard. Clearly, we don't have that same standard for basketball program.
Sorry guys but LSU basketball has basically just sucked since Dale B. left. Don't know but somehow we were always in the mix of things and in the NCAA. Plus we always had top talent mixed with home grown talent. After Brady took over and a few seasons later I just lost all interest in LSU Basketball. Time for a change. B
It's just like the Aggies here in College Station. They want Franchione gone and they beat Texas and everyone is quiet. They they look horrible against Cal in the bowl and everyone here wishes they would have lost to Texas and then they could get rid of him. A lot of us were wanting Brady gone and then we make the final four, and now......
i dont think style of play, or even brady's abrasive personality has much to do with the lack of community supprt. i just think that the community is so overwhelmingly football centered that basketball will always be an afterthought by comparison. of course i remember when i was high school and dale brown and shaq filled the dome, but i dunno if that was more the rule or the exception. i think lsu is a football school and always will be. plus lsu is a bigger baseball school than most, so that leaves even less attention for the basketball team.
It's quite simple really. When LSU is competing for national honors, the seats are packed, whether it be baseball or hoops. Once it appears the team is an also-ran, interest wanes and the empty seats outnumber the occupied ones. In both sports, we have tasted prominence but it doesn't last. Baseball was #1 in the 90s, but since Skip left, we are just another good program. The reason there are threads like this is because being on top of the heap is fun. Great for fans, the city and the school. When we're down, like now, people want to recapture that lightning in a bottle so we look for ways to get there. I'm like everybody else. I'd love to have a Wisconsin, UNC, Florida or UCLA type team right now. But we don't. I can deal with it. Not everybody can.
