BATON ROUGE — At Tuesday afternoon’s LSU basketball Media Day, LSU head coach John Brady emphasized the importance of his three returning starters, Torris Bright, Brian Beshara and Lamont Roland, while recognizing the loss of two NBA draft picks, Stromile Swift and Jabari Smith, who led the team to the NCAA Sweet 16 last season.
Quotes from LSU head basketball coach John Brady
“This is the fourth time I have done this, and to be honest with you, the first two or three times I was always a little uptight about it, because I always wanted to feel like our team was good enough, that I was good enough, that we could do something significant here. Regardless of everything that we have faced here as a coaching staff, having the year that we had a year ago has made me approach this in a much more relaxed fashion, because I feel like we did something significant with the basketball program. We have gained some respect, not only from the state, but from a nationwide standpoint.”
“Last year’s season was totally unexpected. I have never experienced anything like it, from coaching high school, to being an assistant on someone’s staff, to what we were able to experience last year.”
“I appreciate our fans, in particular our student body, for the way they responded to our team. It was a lot of fun. But you know as well as I know, that was last year.”
“People seem to be talking about all the players that we’ve lost, and nobody seems to be talking about the players that we have returning. And I understand that, and they should, because we did lose two significant players. We lost the 2nd and the 45th players in the NBA draft, that’s significant on a team.”
“Who would have ever thought, watching Stromile Swift play 14 games his freshman year that he would go from that, at the end of the season over a year ago, to working himself into a position to be the 2nd player picked in the NBA draft.”
“I remember watching Jabari Smith not make conditioning his first year as a junior college transfer. He couldn’t even finish a run, and then he gets picked as the 45th player in the NBA draft.”
“We lost our top two scorers from a year ago, 28.7 points per game. We lost our top two rebounders, 15.2 rebounds per game as a two-some. We lost our top two players that went to the foul-line more than anybody. It was the first time in my career that I had a team make more free-throws than the other teams combined attempted. I always heard at Indiana that their goal every year is to make more free-throws than the other team attempts. That means you are doing two things, you are getting the ball to the right people to get fouled, plus you are playing good defense on the other end without fouling.”
“We lost our top two shot blockers, obviously. One guy is 6’11” and the other guy is 6’9″ and extremely athletic. We lost that. That is going to hurt our team from a defensive standpoint. Some of those things that we all take for granted, blocking shots, catching the ball three feet over the rim and dunking them into the goal, all those things will not be as easy to our team to score the ball. And it won’t be as easy for our team defensively because of the presence those two guys occupy.”
“We lost our top two guys in terms of field goal percentage. Our best two shooters on the team are gone. The two things we did last year in the SEC were we led the Southeastern Conference in field goal percentage defense because of the shot blockers. We also led the Southeastern Conference in field goal percentage because we had two guys that could score around the goal.”
“But when I look back on our stats from a year ago, in 15 of the 34 games someone else led us in scoring besides Jabari and Stromile. In 12 of those games, someone else led us in rebounding besides Jabari and Stromile. There are some returnees on our team that are going to play a significant role in the success of this team. We are returning 47.2 points per game off of the team from a year ago. We return three of our top five scorers. We return our top two three-point field goal percentage guys. We return our top four free-throw percentage shooting players from a year ago.”
“We also have good perimeter experience, and if you are ever going to start building a team, and I said this last year, was the addition of Torris Bright. Finally we had a point guard that knew how to distribute the ball and score the ball in critical moments of the game and not turn the ball over in critical moments of the game. He was able to do that. So our perimeter is SEC good. That is the strength of the team.”
“Our team has a basic toughness about it. The longer I’ve coached, the more I equate toughness with talent. If you’ve covered basketball, then you’ve probably seen a lot of talented players that aren’t very tough. Sometimes their talent is wasted. I almost view toughness as a talent to go with some physical skills. Talent without toughness sometimes gets lost. This team has a basic toughness about it, they know how to win.”
LSU basketball player quotes
On the loss of Jabari Smith and Stromile Swift
“Our team definitely realizes that without Jabari (Smith) and Stromile (Swift) we are weaker on the inside, and we are going to be a perimeter oriented team. We realize that the strength of our team will be the perimeter.”
“I wouldn’t say our inside presence is gone. We have Brad Bridgewater, who has improved immensely since last year. We picked up Jason Wilson, who is also a good inside player. Neither of those guys are on the level of high NBA draft picks, but both are capable of playing in the SEC.”
On his role this upcoming season
“I realize that I am going to have to step up this year. The scoring is going to have to be picked up, the defense and also rebounding. I didn’t have to rebound nearly as much last year coming off the bench and because of who we had last year. I realize that being a 6’7″ guard that there isn’t going to be a lot of guards my size in the SEC, and I am going to have to rebound the ball, and the coaches have told me that.”
“This year I will probably be playing point guard, two guard and small forward. I am definitely looking forward to the added responsibility.”
On the off-season training program
“This summer we had a new strength coach. Coach Nick Bucholtz left last year. This year our strength coach, Scott Gadeken, really worked hard with us and we did a lot of quickness work rather than long distance running. We did a lot more basketball oriented drills.”
“We are going to have to run more than we did last year. We are going to be a smaller, quicker team. We lost a lot with the big men, but we are closer to the rest of the size of the SEC now. We were one of the biggest teams in the nation last year. We are going to have to work hard without a doubt, but we will be an exciting team to watch.”
On his role this upcoming season
“My role is going to be whatever the coaches need me to do. I feel like I can be a very versatile player on the team this year, take advantage of some mismatches, and really lead by example.”
On his role as a leader
“I feel like I have taken on some leadership roles in the past two years. I feel like I just need to keep doing an extension of that. Hopefully my teammates respect me and realize I’m just doing what is best for the team. I just want to help us win and I will do anything to help us do that.”
On the offense this season
“We are still fine-tuning the offense, and we are still tinkering with stuff. And I’m sure the coaches haven’t shown us everything they are going to break out. It is going to be a lot of screening and movement, and really the team is going to need to work together to get the players open and to get each other in a position to be the most effective.”
“I think winning is contagious just like losing is contagious. You have to have a winning attitude to be able to handle the set-backs and the difficult times that happen throughout the season. We started out 1-3 in the conference last year, and we kept the faith that we were a good team. That’s all we have to do this year. We know we have talent, we know we are a good team, and just because some predictions aren’t were we think they should be, we just have to keep the faith that we are a good team, and we have talented players that can do some good things this year.”
On the team’s off-season trip to Italy
“The Italy trip was fun. It was a big learning experience for us really. We won three out of five, the first two we lost because we were out of shape, and the new offense is more up and down. I played alright some of the games, but I have a lot to work on.”
On his role this season
“Mainly my role is going to be to control the team. I am going to have to shoot more because of Jabari (Smith) and Stromile (Swift) leaving. But I don’t think that will be a problem.”
On what he learned form last season
“Last year the biggest lesson I learned is to give it all you have and play hard every game. Different guys are going to come at you every night, especially this year with Stromile (Swift) and Jabari (Smith) leaving. We are going to have to play hard every game.’
On the off-season conditioning program
“We conditioned really hard. We conditioned like three days a week. That should help us out a lot. We are going to try and do the same things we did last year. Our guards are experienced now and should be better. It is going to be up to the other team and how well they play.”