BATON ROUGE — LSU held its annual basketball media day on Tuesday in the Athletic Department Conference Room and at the Maravich Assembly Center.
Both Coach John Brady and Pokey Chatman spoke with the media and then the session moved to the Maravich Center for team and individual pictures and media interviews with the players on both teams.
Here are some of the quotes from the men’s basketball portion of media day:
COACH JOHN BRADY
“Since the last three weeks of last season, our commitment now is we don’t want to be good anymore. We want to be great. I look and see what Skip Bertman is doing, the commitment he has made to our program, taking ownership of the PMAC. We want to be great. We hired some new coaches and what we first told our team in our first meeting when they returned to school is we want to do everything we can to play for the national championship. A lot of things have to happen for that to take place. First of all, everyone needs to work together. We need support from the administration. Coach Bertman has really put an emphasis on men’s basketball since last spring and into the summer, especially from a promotions standpoint. I think one of things he did, for all of our programs, is taking ownership of the building, the Assembly Center. In the past, nothing has really been done in any significant ways of improving it. Now that the Athletic Department owns it, like it owns the football stadium, it owns the arena that occupies four sports here at LSU. Next spring, they are spending $5 million on new seating, which is really necessary. I appreciate Skip doing that.
“The second thing that needs to take place is recruiting. We can all talk about what a good coach this person is or what a bad coach that person is, if they don’t have good players, good people to work with, they have no chance. Our recruiting last year was good, our recruiting of this freshman class was good and our recruiting for the following year will be highly ranked also. Third, you have to play a good schedule. We have made a step towards doing that. Compared to what we have done in the past, it certainly is a challenging schedule. We have home games against West Virginia, Ohio State, a neutral game with Florida State in the Sugar Bowl, on the road at Utah and Houston, those games are very good for us. We open up the season with a tournament here. I don’t know if Louisiana Tech, UL-Lafayette, Tulane and LSU have ever played in the same building in recent years. We open up with that. With about 95,000 to 100,000 people on campus with the Ole Miss game on a Saturday, we have a doubleheader on Friday night and the two losers and winners play on Sunday, so I think it will draw a crowd. So our schedule is better, that is a third thing.
“The fourth thing, you need to have good coaches, good coaches that work together like the team works together to play for a national championship. We hired three new coaches. Obviously with Butch Pierre staying here and not going to UL-Lafayette is beneficial for us. He keeps our continuity in recruiting for us. We hired Scott Soprych and we didn’t have that position in the past. He will be our administrative/basketball operations person for us. He has been at Indiana for four or five years. He will help us with our video, our breakdown of tape and all those kind of things most young people are good at these days. We hired Nikita Johnson from the University of New Orleans who has coached at a lot of places. He is very good and I have known him for awhile. Then we hired John Treloar, an assistant coach at Indiana for the last seven years. He won a championship in Germany overseas, won a CBA championship as a head coach and now he is on our staff.
“The fifth thing we need to play for a national championship is support. We need to have it. I hope the fans will notice the things we have done in our recruiting, the way our team plays, our upgrading of the facilities, our help from the administration. Now I am not standing up here and saying we are going to play for the national championship. That is our mindset. I have alluded to the fact that a lot of things to play for a national championship have got to happen out of the coaches’ control. Some good fortune has got to happen along the way. We had several of those things happen during the offseason. Hiring new coaches was another. Glen Davis becoming eligible and not thinking he was an NBA player as he did for about a month stretch there. Obviously, Brandon Bass trying out for 12 to 14 NBA teams when he is 18, but he decided to come back to LSU. All of those things happened completely out of my control. It all happened in a positive way for us. When Coach Bertman came here when they haven’t won in baseball here forever, he talked about going to Omaha. The players at that particular time thought Omaha was another team on the schedule. They had no idea that is where the College World Series was. That is what we are talking about as a team. When that is going to happen, I don’t know but that is the goal we have.
“I think the players that we have here presently, the players that are coming back next year, the players that we are going to add as a recruiting class and commitments that I can’t call by names, all those things are good for our players and I feel we could have a special team this year and the next several years. I looked back on the problems that our team had this past year. The things that I saw two years ago when Collis (Temple III) was a senior, when Ronald Dupree was a senior, when Torris Bright was a senior, that team down the stretch played as good as any team I ever coached. Obviously the 2000 year was quite a good one. The 2000 team shot the ball over 1,900 times, the 2002 team shot the ball over 1,700 times and the 2003 team had around 1,300 shots. How did the teams in 2000 and 2002 get more shots? Our postmen shot the ball around the same number of times, it was our perimeter play that was lower. We had less steals also. That tells me we weren’t committed enough to running the ball, weren’t getting enough turnovers. We didn’t do things necessary to get easy shots and enough shots. So what we are going to do now is run more and be committed to running more to get some easy baskets.
“Our coaches went on a retreat last week for a couple of days. We got away from phones and hung out in a house on the golf course in St. Francisville to talk some ball. We came up with some ideas, particularly offensively. Defensively our team has been pretty steady, in the top three or four in field goal percentage defense and rebound margin, those things that make a great defensive team. Last year’s team, offensively, we did not create enough easy baskets. We talked about playing games with a 16 second shot clock, making our guys run and score quickly and looking to attack the ball early in the offense as opposed to reversing the ball and getting to a certain place. A lot of players say they want to win but aren’t committed enough to running. Even in our preseason workouts, most of the things that we have done have been of the full-court nature, getting out and sprinting, shooting balls off one pass.
“Academically, our team continues to be in good shape. Our eight scholarship players had over a 3.0 grade point average in the spring semester. For the first time in the history of the SEC, there was an All-SEC Freshman Academic team. To make that team, you have to have a 3.0 or better GPA. We had two guys make that team, Ross Neltner and Brandon Bass. If you look at the list real closely, most of the guys were like Ross Neltner. Ross will contribute to our team in several ways later on, but the rest of the players that made the team were like the ninth or 10th man. They didn’t play much. Brandon Bass was by far the player that was most significant in winning or losing every game. Not only was he All-SEC Academic, he was also the SEC Freshman of the Year.”
LSU MEN’S BASKETBALL PLAYER QUOTES
Antonio Hudson, Guard, Sr.
On his final year at LSU
“My mom and I were just talking over the weekend about how it just seemed like yesterday that I was walking out of the house to come to college, and now we’re talking about getting a degree. Now I’m about to enter the real world.”
On playing at a consistent level
“I don’t ever want to be considered selfish. Sometimes you can confuse aggressiveness with selfishness, and I just need to get it in my mind that it’s OK to be aggressive. This year, I’m going to try and be aggressive, attack the basket, and not play laid-back like I have in the past. I know I haven’t been as consistent as I need to be, so this year there’s going to be a change.”
On his role as a leader
“It’s not necessary for me to be a vocal leader; as long as I lead with my actions and the things that I do, everything will fall into place. What sense does it make for me to yell and holler at somebody else when I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do? If I go on the court and show the other players what needs to be done, then I’ll be making a difference.”
Brandon Bass, Forward, So.
On his summer workouts
“I went into the summer with the attitude that I had no strengths, so I could work on every part of my game. When I went to those (NBA pre-draft) camps, I just competed every day. It taught me to be a better competitor, because I had to wake up early every morning and be prepared to go to a workout. It toughened me up mentally and physically. Just being in that type of atmosphere every day helped me tremendously.”
On his role with the team
“I always consider myself as a leader on the team whether I’m one of the young guys or an older guy because of my work ethic. Even though I don’t talk that much, I still consider myself a leader.”
On the condition of his left knee (Bass underwent arthroscopic knee surgery 10 days ago)
“The knee feels good; I’m just re-habbing it right now and stretching out my hamstring and my quad. I feel like I’ve turned the corner with the rehab, and I’ll be back on the floor in about two-and-a-half weeks.”
Tack Minor, Guard, So.
On LSU’s offensive philosophy this season
“That’s what I like to do — run and gun — and when Coach Brady told us that’s what we’re going to do, I was very excited. All summer I’ve been running and trying to get in top shape for this season. It sparked my eyes when Coach told me that was the type of game we’re going to play. That’s the type of game I like — running and gunning and making big plays.
“Last year, we had some off games where we came out and didn’t execute. We would run-and-gun for a while, then we would run set plays, and it was confusing. This year, we’re going to run, and if we don’t have a play, we’ll back the ball back out and start over.”