re: Can y’all tell me about Smoke Laval?

Skip's ego made him want his selection to be someone from his legacy and someone he hand picked. They actually hired Smoke before the 2001 season and he spent the whole season sitting in the dugout doing nothing. 2002 was his first year.

If Skip made it have to be a legacy hand picked hire he should have gone with Jim Wells from Alabama. I know LSU fans kind of think of Jim Wells as a joke with the way his career tailed off. But in 2001 Jim Wells had the second best baseball program in the SEC. Alabama won 50+ games in 3 out of 5 seasons leading up to 2001 and gave Skip and LSU all they could handle on a regular basis. He still had a lot of fire at that point in his career.