You are asking for a simple answer to a question filled with complexities. There are many variables that contribute to a coaches success, some which are completely out of his control.
Situations like this are going to haunt Trent until he shows he can stanch the bleeding of top talent from the state. As maddeningly inconsistent as Brady was, this was something he managed to do on a semi-regular basis, for a program suffering from both schollie restrictions and old facilities. So this is not an unreasonable expectation to put on Trent's shoulders. The question is whether Gathers was an isolated case of a spoiled kid who felt he wasn't coddled enough, or is he another symptom of a deeper problem.
Without Collis Temple Senior he wouldn't have been able to pull in one of those guys other than Tasmin and Tasmin was brought in by Brady's assistant that was his Godfather. Brady lived off of Collis Temples AAU connection to the kids living around BR. Brady sucked as a recruiter and coach. TJ sucks as a recruiter and the jury is still out on his coaching.
even Glenn Guilbeau wrote an article defending Trent: Prep coach clarifies recruit's remarks about LSU coach | Shreveporttimes | shreveporttimes.com
Gathers just felt he had to come up with an excuse for not signing with the home-town team. Players who do leave, get a lot of grief before they leave home from the locals. Gathers screwed up by picking this excuse however, and he is still going to get grief over it. Leaving is bad enough, but making the home-town coach look bad adds insult to injury.
He's signing with Baylor because they're ranked #6 and LSU is not ranked. He's not interested in working to build up a team into a national power. He wants to go somewhere that's already playing at a high level. That's okay. Not everyone has what it takes to (re)build a program. Some guys are just good at maintaining the current level of success.
well think about it. you're a star basketball player at LSU, you're always going to be second fiddle to the football team, and probably the baseball team as well (note that most of the top programs in basketball are schools without good football teams). I'm sure the Baylor coach and the St Johns coach pointed out to him that he'd be a no-body at LSU compared to the rock-star he'd be at Baylor or St Johns. just have him go to the LSU message boards and see how little LSU fans care about the LSU basketball team. and Gathers has been to numerous LSU basketball and football games and seen the lack of support for basketball with his own eyes. sure, if LSU was ranked #6 like Baylor the P-Mac would be rocking and LSU fans would be buzzing about the basketball team, but nobody expects LSU to be like that anytime soon, not even if we had Gathers. meanwhile, at Baylor they are currently #6 in the country, and being that Gathers is joining a Baylor recruiting class featuring two other Top 10 recruits at their positions, it looks like Baylor will stay elite for the foreseeable future, making the Baylor basketball players the most popular boys on campus...esp now that RGIII is gone
Just watching the team last night, it's starting to become clearer why Trent has never been too interested in acquiring big name recruits like Gathers. We have waves and waves of solid ballplayers coming back next year and none of them were considered future NBA prospects coming out of high school. They are all long, versatile and they play hard. Guys like Courtney, Isaac and Ludwig will provide great bench production next season, and with the infusion of Malik Morgan and hopefully another big or two, we'll be deep on the wings and inside. JOB, Turner, Hamilton and Hickey are proven SEC players at this point and they'll all be back (crossing fingers on Hamilton), plus Stringer who can provide value as a streaky gunner. I am not saying I like missing out on Gathers any more than you guys do, but I am starting to see the wisdom of Trent's approach to building a program. We return a pretty complete team next year even without Rico Gathers, for better or worse.
There's definitely validity in his approach, but losing Gathers hurt and not just because of how good he is. We need depth down low. Hopefully, we can pick somebody up to help with that.
