BATON ROUGE — LSU men’s basketball coach John Brady announced on Friday that Michael Giorlando will join the LSU staff as assistant coach for the 2001-2002 season.
Giorlando will replace Donnie Tyndall, the LSU assistant who recently left the Tigers to take a job as assistant head coach at the University of Idaho. Giorlando had served on the coaching staff at the University of New Orleans prior to taking the LSU position.
The 42-year old New Orleans native served five years on the UNO staff and had been a full-time assistant for the Privateers since September 1999.
Prior to that he served as a graduate assistant in 1991-92 under then UNO head coach Tim Floyd and as a restricted earnings coach for two seasons (1997-99).
“In the hiring of Mike Giorlando, we have added an experienced, talented coach to replace Donnie Tyndall,” said coach Brady. “My association with Mike goes back 10 years when I worked with Tim Floyd at UNO. Mike has also worked for coach Floyd and possesses the talent and expertise to fulfill the responsibilities of this position.
“Since I have been a head coach I have always pursued talented, loyal, hard working coaches who have the experience and the ability to become head coaches. With the addition of Mike, along with Kermit and Butch, our coaching staff continues to be built on that philosophy and in my opinion, is the best in the SEC,” said Brady, who will enter his fifth year at LSU this fall.
Giorlando is a 1980 graduate of Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. He also received his doctor of dental surgery degree from the LSU School of Dentistry in New Orleans in 1984 and a master’s in education from UNO in 1987. He served as a Dentist after getting his degree for six years before getting into coaching.
He also served five years as a high school coach in the prep ranks, serving as boys’ head coach at St. Martin’s, Archbishop Shaw and Archbishop Hannan in the New Orleans area. His teams made three state-playoff appearances, including the 1995-96 and 1996-97 season at Hannan. He also served two seasons as the junior-varsity coach at St. Martin’s from 1989-91.
Giorlando was director of UNO’s critically acclaimed Hoops for Education summer high-school basketball camp in 1990 and 1991.
Giorlando and his wife, Judy, have two sons: Andrew 8, Michael 4.