BATON ROUGE — LSU men’s head basketball coach John Brady announced on Tuesday that reserve sophomore guard Tony Gipson would not play the remainder of the 2002-03 basketball season for the Tigers.
Coach Brady issued the following statement:
“In the six years we have been here at LSU, we have graduated eight players with thee more on line to graduate in May or this summer. We have the distinction of being the only Division I basketball program in the country with a PH. D. and a graduate school student playing significant minutes on our team. We have just completed our best semester as a team in terms of the success we experienced in the classroom. Each of our signees for next year has already met the NCAA qualifications for certification and are excellent students.
“In spite of these successes, sometimes a student-athlete doesn’t do what is required. With the support, knowledge, help and guidance Tony Gipson received this past semester, he was not able to meet the necessary requirements to continue to be able to play the remaining games this season. Our coaching staff, along with (Executive Director) Dr. Roger Grooters in the Academic Center worked with Tony, but we came up short in all our efforts in one class. Tony realizes what he did not do, takes responsibility for that; but he is a very capable student and will work through this temporary setback in order to play the following two seasons at LSU. We are looking forward to him being a significant part of our team the next two years.”
Gipson played in 11 games and averaged 4.5 points per game and 0.9 rebounds while playing 9.4 minutes per game. He came to LSU after his freshman year at Panola Junior College and will have two years of eligibility remaining.