OK, NOW The Coaching Thing Might Be Over; Hoops A Shrimp On Utah’s Barbie; A Recruiting Reset

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After all the back and forth rumors on assistant coaches, I decided this week I wasn’t going to post anything in the BBB about them until some verifiable – OFFICIAL – word was going to come down the pike. We call that exasperation.

After all, let’s review the names the grapevine has put out on coaches in the last month or so, shall we?

DeWayne Walker
Vic Koenning
Greg Robinson
Ed Orgeron
Bill Johnson
Karl Dunbar
Pete Jenkins
Jimmy Brumbaugh
Jim Jeffcoat
Mel Tucker
Tony Hughes
James Willis
Vance Joseph
Corey Raymond
Bo Davis
Dan Brooks
Larry Slade

and I’m sure there are others.

At the end of the day, though, from the looks of it the coaching staff is finally complete. John Chavis was officially announced as LSU’s defensive coordinator Monday after our blog update went out, which seems to happen with irritating regularity of late, and this morning a story which broke yesterday was confirmed when in something of a surprise Ron Cooper was named as LSU’s secondary coach. Cooper’s hiring was a real coup for head coach Les Miles; many remember him for the disastrous head coaching tenure he had at Louisville when the Cardinals fell off badly on his watch after Howard Schnellenberger built the program up and came back strong after he left under John L. Smith. That might well be the case, but Cooper’s record as a secondary coach since his time as head of a program (he had head coaching stints at Eastern Michigan prior to Louisville and at Alabama A&M after that) has been exemplary. At South Carolina, where he’s been since 2004, Cooper has put three players into the NFL – first-round draft pick Johnathan Joseph and fourth-rounders Fred Bennett and Ko Simpson. He also has three more on the way, as the Gamecocks are about to lose Captain Munnerlyn to an early exit and Stoney Woodson and Carlos Thomas look like decent bets to get drafted as well. USC’s pass defense the last couple of years has been pretty darn good under two different coordinators and without a dominating (or even particularly decent) run defense.

Cooper also fills a big hole in recruiting, as he has been South Carolina’s ace guy working Georgia. With Bradley Dale Peveto moving on to Northwestern State, that connection for LSU was in jeopardy prior to this hire, so it makes lots of sense. Cooper was South Carolina’s recruiter for Darren Myles, for example; one would think LSU is in an even stronger position for the Atlanta Carver safety.

There has been no official word as yet on Brick Haley as LSU’s new defensive line coach, but the Advocate’s Randy Rosetta reported Tuesday that Haley is wandering the hallways in LSU’s football office and that would indicate he probably has the job here.

And from what it sounds like – yeah, I know every time I say that on this topic it turns out to be wrong, so shaddap – Joe Robinson is sticking around as the special teams coach. So for now, from the looks of it your 2009 LSU coaching staff is:

Gary Crowton, offensive coordinator/QB’s (Last assignment: Oregon offensive coordinator)
Larry Porter, RB’s/assistant head coach (Oklahoma State AHC/RB’s)
Josh Henson, TE’s/recruiting coordinator Oklahoma State TE’s/RC)
Greg Studrawa, offensive line (Bowling Green off. coordinator/OL)
D.J. McCarthy, wide receivers (UCLA WR’s)
John Chavis, defensive coordinator/LB’s (Tennessee DC/LB’s)
Brick Haley, defensive line (Chicago Bears DL)
Ron Cooper, defensive backs (South Carolina DB’s)
Joe Robinson, special teams (Arizona special teams)

That’s a pretty good staff, and I think it’s a considerable upgrade from last year’s. I think the leadership and intensity on defense will likely improve with Chavis at the controls, and Haley and Cooper are known for being pretty hard drivers who get a lot out of their players. Nobody gets more out of a linebacking corps than Chavis does, as well; he’s had 12 linebackers drafted since 1998, including first-rounders in Al Wilson and Jerod Mayo, who was the NFC Defensive Rookie of the Year this year.

So where LSU’s defense lacked direction and cohesion this past season, it would be a surprise to see anything other than a well-oiled machine this coming fall. Add that to a Jordan Jefferson emergence, which it looks like we’re beginning to see based on the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, and a recruiting class as good as any LSU has put together in recent memory which promises to supply quite a few impact players, and there is no reason to look at LSU and think anything other than that Miles will have a championship-quality team in 2009.

I’m happy. At this point I’d have been happy with Curley Hallman and Mike Bugar getting hired so that the coaching story could finally go away, but with the way things have transpired I’m actually for legitimate reasons of a staff upgrade.

An Ugly Night In Salt Lake: Our readers might have sensed a good deal of foreboding in our last BBB update when we mentioned that Utah’s star player Luke Nevill was 7-2 and 265 pounds. Well, there were no magic tricks available to Tiger head coach Trent Johnson as the Utes crushed LSU by a 91-61 count last night. Nevill led the way for Utah with 23 points the easy way – right under the basket. Chris Johnson once again could do nothing to stop his man from posting him up and pushing him down under the basket, something which is happening every night now. With Alabama and Arkansas beginning to look awfully good – the Razorbacks knocked off No. 7 Texas last night after beating Oklahoma over the weekend – it no longer seems fashionable to consider LSU as a strong contender in the SEC West. The Tigers, at 12-2, still have a decent shot at earning an NCAA Tournament invite if they can win more than they lose in league play, though, and they’re capable of doing that regardless of their struggles on the interior. It’s going to take continued strong play out of Marcus Thornton, Bo Spencer and Tasmin Mitchell, though, and somebody else has got to develop into a legitimate fourth scoring option.

On that subject, Terry Martin came back from a four-game suspension and played in the Utah game. He scored three points, which isn’t enough by any stretch if the Tigers can’t find some help inside. At least he’s back, though, and on a given night Martin can be that fourth scorer off the bench.

On the basketball recruiting front, LSU continues to be a factor for Scout’s No. 53 player DaShonte’ Riley, a 6-10, 220-pounder from Country Day High School in Detroit. Riley, the enigmatic but super-talented post player who originally committed to Georgetown in October but reneged on National Signing Day the next month, is visiting Marquette this weekend. He has three more visits left and LSU is vying with Cal, Oregon, Syracuse and Virginia to get one of them.

Riley just seems like a great fit for LSU given the Tigers’ abject need for a big man who can come in and start next year and Trent Johnson’s well-deserved reputation for developing post players, like Nick Fazekas at Nevada and the Lopez twins at Stanford. Hopefully he’ll take a visit to LSU this spring and end up agreeing with me.

So How’s Recruiting Going? After a few days of stewing, I think I’m finally over the ridiculous spectacle of “hat tricks” at those weekend all-star games. And with the dust settling after those games it does appear that while the Andre Debose Florida commitment Sunday was a major blow LSU is otherwise in pretty good shape to land the nation’s best recruiting class.

First, on Rueben Randle all the latest buzz has LSU doing very well. There was apparently a meeting yesterday in Bastrop between Randle and his people and some LSU coaches, and the Tigers appear to be pulling out the wrapping paper on him. It’s not over yet, but my source up there tells me that Randle is seeing through a lot of what the other schools on his list have been telling him. You can cross one of the four teams he was considering off his list now that Oklahoma State’s wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor has joined the staff at Auburn, so now it’s LSU, Oklahoma and Alabama. Of the three, LSU probably has the best situation at quarterback for the future given that OU has maybe one more year of Sam Bradford (and I would guess not even that given his current stock for the 2009 draft) and the Tigers certainly have all the other elements an in-state recruit might be looking for.

I’m also told that LSU is far out in front of the pack for Barkevious Mingo, to such an extent that it’s really just a matter of time before he makes his commitment official. It’s not even clear where else Mingo is seriously considering at this point.

On Janzen Jackson, who has been the subject of a lot of conjecture given that Tennessee is talking about hiring his father as their defensive backs coach and Alabama won’t seem to go away where his recruitment is concerned, the latest is that the hiring of Cooper has LSU more or less out of the woods and his commitment is firming up some. If that’s so, LSU is basically waiting on some word from Darren Myles to wrap up an awfully good crop of defensive backs in this class (two five-star players in Craig Loston and Jackson, a four-star in Myles, assuming he comes, and a highly-underrated three-star player in Morris Claiborne). Following on the heels of last year’s group, which contained some pretty talented guys in Patrick Peterson, Karnell Hatcher, Brandon Taylor, Derrick Bryant and Ryan St. Julien, it’s no surprise that Cooper wanted to come here and coach.

LSU is also apparently warming in a major way to Tahj Jones, the 6-2, 205 pound Class 5A all-state linebacker from Sulphur. Chavis was in Sulphur to recruit Jones this week, which should offer an indication that the Tigers want to find a way to add him to this class. Jones still has some academic issues to resolve, so he might well be a guy they take and then grayshirt.