The LSU men’s basketball team made a significant breakthrough last season. Despite a deceiving 12-15 record, there was nothing but optimism ensuing the 1998-99 season. With only one recruiting class, John Brady and his coaching staff had brought respectability and competitive basketball back to Baton Rouge.
Now with a strong nucleus returning, along with three newcomers capable of making an immediate impact, LSU basketball is in its best shape in many years. Having made the most of a difficult inheritance, Brady and company now prepare for a season that could possibly be the turning point in the Tigers’ quest to rejoin the nation’s elite. LSU Basketball Gameday editor Fred Demarest sat down with the architect of the LSU basketball program to discuss the upcoming season.
Demarest: With the personnel you have returning, combined with three tremendous additions, it’s quite obvious that this is the most talented team during your tenure.
Brady: To start with our team for this year, you have to start by looking at the quality players we bring back, starting with our center, Jabari Smith. Brian Beshara started every game a year ago. Those two will be vastly improved this season. Then you have Stromile Swift who came in last year with one day of practice, then played in 15, 16 SEC games. Everybody knows what kind of talent he has and he is just going to continue to get better. Jermaine Williams is back, he led us in minutes played by our freshmen class last year and we had a number of freshman who played significant minutes last year. Brad Bridgewater gives us tremendous depth and a physical presence, so those are very good returning players for us.
Follow that up with Collis Temple, a guard who red-shirted last year and add three signees that we think are pretty good. Torris Bright, a freshman point guard from Slidell has been impressive and will have to demonstrate a lot of maturity this year and pick up a big role. Ronald Dupree will help our front court out significantly and Lamont Roland helps us at the two guard, he was the National Junior College Player of the Year.
When you look at our team on the surface, we are a very talented team. Taking Lamont (Roland) as an example, however, an injury can make it very difficult on us because of our depth due to our scholarship situation. Lamont sprains his ankel in the opening exhibition game and we can’t really afford injuries with our limitations. Those are the kinds of things that can affect the success of our team simply because of the scholarship limits we’re working under. But if things work out where our team remains healthy, this is our most talented team, it’s our best team and it’s our most experienced team now in our third year here as a staff.
Demarest: In your first two years here you’ve mastered the science of being able to do more with less talent. Now that you’re developing the turnover with players returning and a little more consistency within the program, do you feel that you can finally start teaching the game and spend less time having to work on fundamentals?
Brady: This is the first year we’ve had returning players. The first year we just put players we can get in here on the floor and it was the least talented team in the league. But it probably played as hard as any team in the league.
Then our philosophy and our approach from the first year to the second was that if there was ever an appropriate time to change the program like we wanted, that was it, so we brought in 10 new players and eight freshman. Now I told everyone, when you sign eight freshman, not all of them are going to stay. There was still some turnover between the second and third year, but in spite of that, the collection of players that we have returning went through a season together, they went through a summer together, they went through strength and conditioning together, they’ve been through a Fall together. Obviously, we can continue to progress now and not work on some of the things that they needed to work on when they first arrived. We have more camaraderie between this team and trust within the team, not only between players, but in the coaching staff’s relationship with the players and that’s going to show up in our play. I’ll be surprised too if it doesn’t show up in the number of wins this season.
Demarest: While not a lot of attention has been paid to your front court in many of the preseason publications, you have to feel like the trio of Beshara, Swift and Smith can rank up there with almost anyone in the SEC. Where does this front court rank in the conference?
Brady: They’re three good players and I don’t apologize for there talent. People know that they have some experience and when you get a little talent to go along with that experience, it makes for a good collection of players. That’s a very good group to start with and I’m not going to say that we rank here or there within the SEC, but I’m very happy with my position of having those three.
We may also mix some things up and start some different lineups depending on who we play to create some mismatches, this team has some flexibility within it. We can play a smaller lineup, we can play the bigger one that you eluded to and we’re going to do that from time to time.
As far as those three, however, Brian is a better player than he was a year ago, so are Stromile and Jabari because they are all more experienced and they’re much stronger physically due to the off-season work out program. Where do they rank in the SEC? I don’t know yet. Their play will ultimately determine that in the long run.
Demarest: You make reference to the team’s conditioning program and the physical progress of your players. The first thing that stands out when looking at Jabari is that he appears in much better shape than a year ago. He looks like he is at about the same playing weight, but his body is proportioned differently, he’s a lot more muscular. The same goes for Stromile. After last season you felt your team needed to be more physical. Talk about the off-season conditioning of this team.
Brady: One of the two areas of our team that we thought we were weakest in was our strength and conditioning and being able to finish games off as we should. The second was that our assist to turnover ratio was very poor.
I think it’s obvious that we have improved the strength of team with our off-season efforts. It remains to be seen if we have improved our passing, ball-handling and decision making. We’ve improved in one area and I don’t think there’s any question just by the looks of our team and how we’ve done in practice to this point. Now our games will show if we’ve improved in our decision making and our assist to turnover ratio. On paper I think we have. Time will tell.
Demarest: Obviously Auburn enters this season as the clear favorite in the SEC West. Outside of that, Alabama has a lot of talent coming in, Arkansas will be solid, but there doesn’t appear to be a clear cut second team in the SEC West. How do you see the West shaping up this season and does LSU have as good a shot as anyone else to sneak up and get up into that second or third position?
Brady: There’s no doubt that Auburn is the best team returning in the SEC West based on what they accomplished a year ago and what they have returning. They have to be picked up top and they have been. To project who is going to be second or third or fourth would be hard to do right now. I think our team has closed the gap significantly. I think when we first got here we were without a doubt the least talented team in the SEC West, but we are no longer the least talented team. If we continue to work and be team-oriented and stay injury free, with the talent we have this year, we can be very successful and make a significant move in the West and that’s what we’re anticipating happening.
Demarest: When you came here coach, you and your staff inherited a very difficult situation and a program that was not left in very good shape. Do you finally feel like you’re starting to the light at the end of the tunnel?
Brady: I think we’re making progress. We were better in our second year than we were in our first and I anticipate we’ll be better here in our third year than we were a year ago. I don’t feel comfortable telling people that we’re there yet because we still have two more years of having only 11 scholarships to offer after this year and that’s a difficult situation to be faced with. That’s six less players that we could normally sign.
From a philosophical standpoint, when you practice with a full 13 scholarship players as opposed to our position, the quality of practice becomes much greater due to the competition you have because of increased number. There’s nothing like good competition at practice. There’s nothing like having a guy who has to work harder because he is concerned about losing his position. With less scholarship players, those concerns become less because the competition is not what it could be. We have very good guys on our team right now and we are much better than we have been. But there is nothing like having 13 players on scholarship to make the quality of the practice better and, ultimately, make your team better and we’ll get to that point, but we’re not there right now.