by Scott Dean
Special to LSUsports.net
(2/2/01)
It was just six years ago this week. A 4-14 LSU team that had dropped 13 of its past 15 games, including losses to Tulane, Jackson State and Lamar, was set to face Auburn on Feb. 4 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
It is a game the Lady Tigers would lose, 65-61 and it is a game LSU coach Sue Gunter would vividly remember.
“I remember that game because we had the game won,” said Gunter. “We had a really bad play. It is almost like that play still unfolds in front of me. Cornelia Gayden hit a three right in front of our bench to put us up by one. I don?t know how she hit it. It was one of those shots where she was covered and she stepped up and knocked it down.
“One of the subs thought we were down by one instead of up by one and fouled. And they went to the line and beat us.”
Outside of a win at South Carolina, that game was LSU?s best chance to pick up a conference victory in the 1994-95 season. The Lady Tigers finished the year with a school-worst 7-20 record, which included just a 1-10 Southeastern Conference mark. That season ended a three-year stretch where LSU won just 27 games.
“It was the most miserable feeling in the whole world. If you have been there and you survive that then you are going to be a better person,” Gunter stated of the losing seasons. “To feel the feelings you have and the helplessness you feel, it is really like fighting Goliath with less than a slingshot. But if you survive it, you will be more appreciative of what is out there.”
“At the 1995 SEC Tournament, (Assistant Coach) Pokey (Chatman) came into my room and said, ?Here is what I want us to do. We need two weeks on the road and I want you to look at some players.? The rest is kind of folk history,” said Gunter.
Those players are what began the turn for the program. Elaine Powell, Pietra Gay, Toni Gross, Aga Cieslak and Latasha Dorsey all enrolled at LSU the next season and guided the Lady Tigers back to the postseason.
Since then, LSU has been on the fast track in the SEC. In the past five seasons, the Lady Tigers have won more games than any team in the conference except Tennessee and Georgia and are now considered to be one of the top three programs in the conference, along with the Lady Vols and Lady Bulldogs.
“I think over the last five years, we are only behind Georgia and Tennessee in wins and so all of a sudden we are looked at as one of the top three teams in the conference. And we just have one more mountain to climb to get to No. 2 and then to win an SEC Championship.”
Fast forward to the present to a Lady Tiger team that is 15-5 and ranked No. 10 in the nation heading into the same Feb. 4 match up with Auburn. My how things have changed. So, how has LSU gone from 10th in the SEC to 10th in the nation in just six years? It is something that never seemed far off to Gunter.
“I always thought we could get back. We had to take some steps, but once we saw the players come in?Elaine, Pietra, Toni?I knew we could,” Gunter says. “There has never been any doubt about what we know about the game or our ability to coach the game. But you have to have the players. You have to have the elite athletes to compete at this level. And that goes back to the ability to recruit well.
“It has been our ability to work our hind-side off in the recruiting process. It has been Pokey and Paula (Lee) and Bob (Starkey) going around and finding young talent and tracking them and bringing them to LSU.”
The road back to the top hasn?t been paved the whole way. It took two years after the horrid 7-20 season for LSU to make an NCAA Tournament appearance. But when the Lady Tigers did, they made it count with a Sweet 16 appearance. However, the next season, Gunter had to cope with the loss of Powell, Gay and Gross. Her 1998 squad was only able to muster a berth in the Women?s National Invitational Tournament. Again, Gunter held faith.
“We knew who we had coming in. You look at that class that were freshman that season: April Brown, Marie Ferdinand and Angelia Crockett. We knew we had some quality players right there. You don?t just lose an Elaine Powell and a Pietra Gary and recover right away. But we all felt like we were on the right track,” Gunter said.
Now the Lady Tigers are loaded with talent and poised to make a run at the Final Four. And it will be with the class of Brown, Ferdinand and Crockett that will take them there.
“These three seniors, their success has been tremendous. I don?t know if we have ever had three seniors to have more success than these three,” noted Gunter. “They keep thinking Final Four. We think we can get there.”
Even with the loss of this year?s senior class, Gunter expects LSU to be back among the nation?s elite right away.
“I don?t think we will as fall of as severely as we did (in 1998) and even that wasn?t severe. But you can?t lose April and Marie and Crockett without feeling it. But you turn around and you have Kisha James and DeTrina White coming back. You look at the Hodges twins who will have a year under their belts.”
It has been an amazing transformation that LSU has undergone since that Auburn game a few years back. But it is helped the Lady Tigers to better understand where they are and where they are going.