LSU hoops assistant Nick Robinson will be introduced today as the new head coach at Southern Utah.  The Salt Lake City native has been on Trent Johnson’s staff for all three of the coaches’ seasons in Baton Rouge.

Robinson played his senior season under Johnson at Stanford.

Last fall, LSU best Oregon in the two teams’ football opener in Arlington, Texas.  Last night, the Ducks got revenge.

Playing on the most obnoxious playing surface west of Boise’s blue football field, LSU fell 96-76 to a hot-shooting Oregon club.  The Tigers rallied to cut the lead to 10 with less than four minutes to play, but the-team-that-Nike-built pulled away from there.

“They came out with a lot more energy,” Ralston Turner said.  “I think that was the difference in the game.  They just hit us in the mouth, and we didn’t respond well.”

Or as Trent Johnson put it: “For whatever reason, we couldn’t guard them.”

Justin Hamilton led LSU with 21 points and nine boards.  Johnson’s team ends the season at 18-15.  But more encouraging is this fact — all five Tiger starters should return to Baton Rouge next season.

No fans dream of reaching the NIT, but this year’s bid for LSU was a sign that the program once again appears headed in the right direction.

The soccer goalie and homecoming queen won’t be a part of LSU’s football team this spring or this summer.  But come August, Mo Isom will be ready to give things another shot.

Les Miles said of the wannabe kicker:


“We reviewed what she can do and cant’ do well, and frankly there are four guys on the team right now that would be ahead of anyone who tried out the other day, including Mo…

We go to kicking off in the corner and we count on our kicker making some tackles.  It’s just not something I’m comfortable she’s ready to do.”


Miles made it clear last week that for Isom to makes his squad — which would open the door to all kinds of messes — she’d have to be able to do everything a guy could do and then still bring some added advantages.  So this is no surprise.

What is surprising is her spirit.  When told she didn’t make the cut, Miles said: “She said, ‘Do I get another opportunity if I get a lot better? and I said, ‘Sure.’”

She tweeted:


“Received great constructive feedback.  Will continue working my hardest w/the team thru Spring&Summer&see where I stand in August.  There is still much to this journey & I will not give up on my dream.”


Miles once again dismissed the suggestion that Isom might be making a play for publicity.  “It’s too painful.  Who would go through this for publicity?”

Whether you’re for a woman making an SEC football team or not, you have to admire this young lady’s gumption.  She’s the female “Rudy.”  (Hopefully she won’t wind up in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an adult.) 

Les Miles suggested earlier this week that LSU soccer star Mo Isom would have to provide the Tigers with some clear advantages if she wanted to make his football team.  Yesterday, she might have done that:


“I hit two (field goals) from the 50, one from the center, one from the hash.  That was really as far back as we went.”


Isom — who says she’s 6-1, 190 pounds — claims to be “comfortable in a weight room full of smelly football players.  It’s really a very different dynamic than being with females in so many ways, but it’s a dynamic I love.”

It’s still doubtful that Isom will make the squad as a walk-on kicker, but best of luck to her for trying.  This certainly doesn’t seem to be a publicity stunt on her part, though you can bet she’ll benefit from all the media attention.  At this point, who doesn’t have their own reality show?

Get ready.  The SEC’s all-boys club might just have to put in a ladies room.

LSU soccer star Mo Isom is going to try to land a placekicking role in Baton Rouge this spring.  She began a walk-on tryout yesterday.  If she makes the Tiger team, she’ll be the first female kicker at an FBS school since Katie Hnida nailed two extra points for New Mexico back in 2003.  Hnida also had an extra point blocked by UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl that season.

Les Miles claims he would have no problem using Isom in a game if she’s the best person for the job:


“No I would have no reservations playing her.  If she gave us an opportunity and an advantage, and I mean add an advantage, then certainly we would consider that.  The good thing about it is she’s an athlete.  She’s been through team before.  She understands the commitment.  I would have much less reservation with her than I would any number of other people that frankly didn’t know what they were getting into.  But the real interesting thing is it has to be an advantage obtained.”


In other words, Isom has some work to do.  She’s got to be better than the guys kicking against her, not just as good.

Let’s face it, whether people want to say it, admit it, or hear it, adding a woman to a football team is tricky business.  Ask ex-Colorado coach Gary Barnett.  He’ll remember Hnida, the female kicker mentioned above.

She initially walked on at Colorado before transferring to New Mexico.  In 2004 she told Sports Illustrated that she had been sexually molested and verbally abused by some of her teammates at Colorado.  She claimed to have been raped by one of them.  Barnett claimed there wasn’t “a shred of evidence” to back up her allegations.  He also made the mistake of saying, “She was awful… Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible.”

Hnida is now a public speaker and author.  Barnett — thanks in part to his comments about a woman who might have been a rape victim — was nuked from the coaching profession in 2005 when a recruiting scandal also popped up at CU.

Adding a female to the team adds an unknown variable into a male-dominated, testosterone-fueled lockerroom.  We’re not saying Isom doesn’t deserve a shot.  But we do agree with what Miles appears to be saying: To go through the trouble of adding a woman and to take on the risk of problems, Isom had better be able to kick the pigskin better than the any male walk-ons. 

As for the former LSU goalkeeper, she says this is not for show.

“People’s first presumption about this is that it’s a media stunt or some attempt for attention and glory,” Isom said.  “That could be any farther from the truth.  I feel it was a goal God placed in my heart.  It’s just something I want to do.”

Miles said yesterday’s conditions made it “a bad day for anybody to kick because the wind was just so strong.”  Isom said she landed “some great kickoffs between the 5-yard-line and the goal line.”  Miles admitted, “obviously she’s got ball skills… she’s been around it.”

According to The Shreveport Times, last August Isom connected on a 51-yard field goal attempt while working out with LSU’s kickers.

She was also named LSU’s homecoming queen last fall.

Last September she took part in a skills competition with the Honey Badger himself, Tyrann Mathieu:




And she also once scored a goal from 90 yards out during an LSU soccer match:




Finally, she’s posted a thanks on Facebook to all of those supporting her.  “There is so much power in prayer, please know that I truly appreciate every single one of you!”

She closes with a quote from Phillipians.

Athlete.  Christian.  Good-looking.  Somebody get Tim Tebow Isom’s number.

After initially turning down the chance to interview at his alma mater, former LSU player Corey Raymond is indeed going to leave Nebraska to join Les Miles’ staff as the school’s secondary coach.

“It was the chance to go home,” Raymond told The Lincoln Journal Star.  Still, it took Miles two runs at the ex-Tiger to land him.  The now ex-Cornhusker coach said telling Nebraska coach Bo Pelini was “one of the toughest things” he’s had to do.  “Because he was so instrumental in my career.  He played a big role in getting me to where I’m at now.”

Raymond played at LSU from 1988 through 1991. 

Interestingly, The Journal Star reports that Raymond was “heavily involved in the recruitment of Tre’vell Dixon, and is a longtime friend of the coach of the four-star athlete from Baldwin, Louisiana.”

Ron Cooper left LSU for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers less than a week ago. 

Les Miles did a fantastic job coaching LSU this past season.  He led his team through the nation’s toughest schedule, avoided dozens of potential off-field pitfalls, won the SEC and made it all the way to the BCS Championship Game with a team that’s still awfully darn young.

If Oklahoma State hadn’t fallen at Iowa State — setting up an LSU-Bama rematch for the title — there’s a good chance Miles has another championship ring in the vault today.

So let’s not start with the “you hate Les Miles” bunk.  Personally, I think he was the nation’s best coach in 2011 (it not early-January 2012, certainly 2011).

But grown millionaires shouldn’t take potshots at teenagers.  Period.  End of story.  Regardless of setting.  Too bad then that Miles did just that with regards to Notre Dame signee Gunner Kiel.

When the five-star quarterback prospect changed his mind last month and enrolled in South Bend rather than in Baton Rouge — most say his mother’s emotional plea to stay close to him led to the switch — Miles tried to be magnanimous.

“There’s a point in time where young people make a variety of decisions for a variety of reasons,” Miles said on January, 17th.  “The only thing I can tell you is there’s a guy in the Midwest who felt staying close to home was the right thing, or maybe here’s a guy in any number of places where the decision comes down to staying close to family and representing a stadium or team nearby.  I understand that very much.  If that’s the cast, then we need to have people that are going to be happy here in Louisiana.”

Well, it doesn’t sound like Miles understands that “very much” now.  Speaking at a booster function on Wednesday, Miles questioned Kiel’s heart and talent:

“There was a gentleman from Indiana that thought about coming to the Bayou State.  He did not necessarily have the chest and the ability to lead a program, so you know.”

Naturally, LSU fans roared with approval.  Their coach had just fired a pretty big insult at a teen who dared to stay close to home to be with his family.  Hoorah!  The hometown Baton Rouge Advocate even cited Miles’ “wit.”

Sorry, folks, but that’s weak.

Miles knew what he was doing and who he was speaking to.  How better to sell fans on the idea that three-star QB prospect Jeremy Liggins is a better acquisition than the five-star Kiel than to just go ahead and rip Kiel?

Liggins — who may turn out to be a better quarterback than Kiel in the long run, who knows? — was praised by Miles for having the grit and gumption to leave his home state for the Tigers.

“Liggins stood up in the middle of Mississippi and said, ‘I’m going to a place where we can win a national championship,’ and I like that man’s style,” Miles said.

Some are sure to defend the coach by stating that his rip of Kiel came in a talk with fans.  He was just giving them some red meat.  True enough.  And if he’d said, “We’re gonna win a national title,” I’d have no problem with it.

But when you take a personal shot at someone else — in front of the media — it’s bush league.  Lane Kiffin didn’t get a pass in 2009 when he claimed in front of a Tennessee booster club that Florida’s Urban Meyer had cheated while recruiting a UT signee (nor did he deserve one).  For Miles to publicly question the heart and leadership qualities of a young man he’d just tried to bring into his program is hugely disappointing and he deserves the backlash he’s going to feel for it.

And there will be some.

Perhaps people will realize that Miles worked hard to land Kiel, someone he now says didn’t have “the chest” to lead LSU.  Doesn’t that mean Miles failed to properly evaluate the kid?

Perhaps Kiel himself changed his mind about LSU after watching Miles go with his run-firt quarterback for all four quarters of the BCS Championship Game, rather than turn the ball over to his pass-first quarterback.  We’ll never know because Kiel didn’t rip Miles or LSU when he landed at Notre Dame.  (Though most everyone else in America ripped LSU’s offensive showing in that game.)

And forget the perhaps on this one, it’s guaranteed: Rival SEC coaches who recruit against Miles are sure to remind parents that LSU’s coach will say anything to land their son… but he’ll turn on him quicker than a bell clapper in a goose’s rear if he inks elsewhere.

This one was bad form from a good coach.

Les Miles said earlier this month that he planned to go to the NFL to find a replacement for departed receivers coach Billy Gonzales.  Seems that’s exactly what he’s done.  Multiple sources “close to the football program” claim that Oakland Raiders tight end coach Adam Henry will be joining the Tigers staff by the end of the week.

LSU sports information director Michael Bonnette said the school is finishing up details on a contract.

Henry has spent the past five years in the Raiders organization, the last three working with the team’s tight ends.  Prior to Oakland, he served as an assistant at McNeese State in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Gonzales left LSU to become the offensive coordinator at Illinois.

With 4:45 to go in last night’s game, LSU trailed Mississippi State by 11.  A furious rally cut that lead to a single point with 18 seconds left, but the Bulldogs prevailed in the end 76-71.  Tiger coach Trent Johnson was less than thrilled with officiating that — in his view — helped the Dogs hang on for a homecourt victory.

In the game’s waning seconds he received a technical foul for sharing his views with the officials.  After the game, he explained his displeasure:


“When you’ve got good kids and they struggle and they fight and there’s things going on out there you don’t like, that’s hard…

The game was decided on the boards, but there was a reason for that.  You can’t be as aggressive as you want.  I just want a clarification so I can help my kids.”


Johnson handled that one well.  Good thing.  If he hadn’t he may well have gotten one of the league’s “don’t blast the officials” fines.

You can add another name to the list of LSU folks denying that a pre-BCS title game fuss led to an uninspired performance in the biggest game of the year.  The new name?  Les Miles, who was asked if there was any truth to the rumor of player dissension:


“Not at all.  We took the field just like we always have.  There’s never been any issue prior to a game.  There has never been a player-coach interaction before or after a game that was negative.”


Most of the rumors and messageboard posts claim that part of the team wanted Jarrett Lee at quarterback and part wanted Jordan Jefferson.  Miles never did go to Lee during the game, but his explanation at a presser yesterday was the same one he delivered after the contest last Monday night.

“I do think about the ability to change quarterbacks,” Miles said.  “That was a question that I had.  I brought it to my staff. … I can tell you that Jarrett Lee did come to mind, we do have confidence in Jarrett.”

But, LSU crossed the 50 or the first time all night early in the fourth quarter.  Down 15-0, Miles felt Jefferson still gave his team the best chance to come back.

“Jordan Jefferson had put us in that position (at Bama’s 32 thanks to an 18-yard quarterback scramble), and the way the pass rush was going in that game we just felt like we needed a mobile quarterback to make a play like that and then understand that if you finish just one drive and score seven, it’s a completely different game.  We just felt like we needed that guy who might be able to get loose with his feet.”

Since the title game, LSU has lost out on star quarterback prospect Gunner Kiel and seen three underclassmen declare for the NFL draft.  What was bright and cheery on the Bayou last Sunday has turned dark and dreary in the minds of many over the last 10 days.

But Miles isn’t stressing.  “We return a team that in my mind will have just as much talent and be just as capable as any that we’ve had… The fundamental of this program is to win championships and this team is a championship team.  We won the West.  We won the conference and certainly in our view the conference is the best in the country.  We spent 11 weeks as the number one team int he country and repelled all comers.  We played eight nationally ranked teams, beat the national champs in the regular season and played in the last game where only two teams get to play.  I cannot bemoan this team’s success, and by any measure this is a great year.”

True enough.  But what about the quarterback spot next year?

“We’ll throw the football more,” said Miles.  “I think there will be a fun approach, a different view of our quarterback position now, and I think it will allow us to throw the football more effectively and to approach a gameplan that can feature some receivers and some balls being thrown down the field maybe a little bit more efficiently.”

Perhaps there would be a lot less griping in the LSU camp today if Miles and company had just tried that approach a time or two against Alabama in New Orleans.