Louisville Jeff Walz to Tennessee?

[CamrnCrz1974]

Nikki has literally never achieved anything. At UCLA, she got to the second round and was bounced. But thats okay, we continue to extend her. Second year within the last 4 years where LSU did not make it to the NCAAT but our AD doesn't care. She ain't leaving LSU no matter what, she loves her paychecks and benefits. No other school is gonna give her a raise and give her the incentives that are given here.

If you look at your AD's history with women's basketball coaches and programs, it is not good (see 2007).

 

[SECbbfan24]

If you look at your AD's history with women's basketball coaches and programs, it is not good (see 2007).

LSU needs a new AD regardless, Alleva (former duke AD) is a moron. There is a long list of issues he has caused at LSU.

 

[biobioprof]

LSU needs a new AD regardless, Alleva (former duke AD) is a moron. There is a long list of issues he has caused at LSU.

AD can be read as Athletics Director or Athletics Dept. Not sure which was meant, but Alleva didn’t arrive until 2008. Skip Bertman was the AD in 2007.

I don’t recall the details of Pokey’s scandal, but LSU WBB was doing very well before that.

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

AD can be read as Athletics Director or Athletics Dept. Not sure which was meant, but Alleva didn’t arrive until 2008. Skip Bertman was the AD in 2007.

I don’t recall the details of Pokey’s scandal, but LSU WBB was doing very well before that.

It was not 2007 at LSU to which I was referring with respect to women’s basketball, but 2007 at Duke, when Joe Alleva was Duke’s Athletic Director.

 

[biobioprof]

It was not 2007 at LSU to which I was referring with respect to women’s basketball, but 2007 at Duke, when Joe Alleva was Duke’s Athletic Director.

ah, thanks. Did people think Alleva didn’t do enough to keep Gail?

At LSU, for all the criticism of Fargas, she’s been better than the MBB hires on Alleva’s watch.

 

[SECbbfan24]

AD can be read as Athletics Director or Athletics Dept. Not sure which was meant, but Alleva didn’t arrive until 2008. Skip Bertman was the AD in 2007.

I don’t recall the details of Pokey’s scandal, but LSU WBB was doing very well before that.

I was referring to athletic director, my bad.

I was around during the pokey scandal and was extremely close inside that program, there was a lot of misconceptions on what truly happened and it was blown out of proportion by a disgruntled LSU assistant coach and the media, but thats a whole other story.

Pokey Chatman was a great recruiter and had kids buy into what she was selling. LSU's program dramatically changed with her as an assistant and having a bigger role later during the Gunter years. After she took over, LSU never looked back. She brought in some insane talent over those years between Fowles, Augustus, Temeka Johnson, Hightower... Yes LSU did "choke" a couple times during their final four appearances but that is still helluva lot better than where we are at today. LSU had a dominant program and was competing on a national scale.

LSU hired Van Chancellor after who rode the system Pokey had built for a couple years before it eventually fell off. Van actually recruited really well nationally with many top kids but did not know how to coach and mold a collegiate team. Much different from the WNBA... After missing the tournament his last year, he stepped aside and we went after Nikki who has been a failure in retrospect for what we hired her for.

Nikki while not "horrifically bad" has been extremely disappointing for me. I don't doubt she knows the games X's and O's but her management of a college program is god awful. She has a horrible foundation with her recruiting and relies on transfers every single year (not even top transfers). She deals with constant suspensions and turnovers (Forthan, Youngblood, Baker, Amechia, Farley). Ballard, LSU's star player eventually got kicked off the team. Chloe Jackson ran like the wind immediately after last season ended. One of her assistant coaches, ex assistant coach Tony Perotti was arrested for harassing a woman at a bar in BR. She rank Nikki Demoss off after some major internal conflicts between those two. Its truly been chaotic, but she continues to make excuses for why she can't be successful. She is arrogant and thinks she never does wrong. I can see how that rubs off in a bad way with recruits. I'm just over it and wish we could move on and work to getting the program back to being competitive again, LSU invests a lot of money into its WBB program.

 

[GDawg]

You DO realize Van Chancellor was a college coach for many years at Ole Miss right? They made the NCAAs (I believe) every year he was there. He certainly understood the college game.

 

[SECbbfan24]

Well Van did a poor job at the end of his LSU coaching year. The team had no identity and didn't play well together. He did bring in talented girls though. He may have had success at Ole Miss but it didn't workout at LSU at all. Those things do happen from time to time, success at one school but can't make it work at a bigger school

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

ah, thanks. Did people think Alleva didn’t do enough to keep Gail?

Flashing back to 2007, Duke was considered one of the top three programs in WBB, in terms of success over the previous 10 years (2 NCAA Runner-Up finishes, 4 Final Fours, 7 Elite Eights).

When Gail Goestenkors was being courted by Texas after Jody Conradt's retirement and the Longhorns were offering a significantly larger amount of money, then-AD Joe Alleva said this about her:

Compared to the top tier of coaches in the women's game, however, Goestenkors' salary does not stack up. Tennessee's Pat Summitt is the highest-paid coach in women's college basketball at an average of $1.125 million guaranteed over six seasons, and Geno Auriemma's contract with Connecticut guarantees him $988,000 per year.
[Coach G made less than $500,000 at the time]

"They've both won a lot of national championships and are part of programs that make money for their institutions. They bring in profit for their athletic departments, and that's not the case for our women's program," Alleva said. "I'm sure some of these other institutions will offer significantly large packages to encourage her to go.

LINK (to then-AD Joe Alleva's comments about Gail Goestnkors)

And yet when one of the most successful coaches in the game (at the time) and the coach of one of the best programs of the previous ten years (again, back in 2007) is being courted, the above-referenced quotes are what Athletic Director Joe Alleva decides to say about everything she built and what she accomplished.

As Abby Waner stated (in the same article, linked above), "She is Duke basketball. She's created what this program has become, and people come here to play for her."

I firmly believe that Goestenkors was not running toward Texas, but running away from Duke. She felt completely disrespected and devalued -- and rightfully so. But I also believe that without those statements from then-AD Joe Alleva, she would have taken more time to evaluate her decision and would have chosen to stay at Duke.