re: LSU Women's basketball 69-78 CMU Final LSU loses in round 1

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I do not think that you are wrong but I think their is an issue with Nikki recruiting kids from Louisiana and I believed it all started with the issues with Coco Baker and Youngblood, both dismissed. She is not from Louisiana and I feel she did not establish a good relationship with the high school coaches plus girl's basketball has been down in Louisiana since she has been there. The only player that you could build a program around was Brown and we all know why she went to Baylor. Ursin fits Nikki's system, she is super athletic but not a great shooter but she didn't play much AAU, which is where coaches do most of their recruiting. I find it ironic that they get Deemer from Ursuline but can't drive down the road to get Weber and Mitchell. I don't think she needed Mitchell because she has Pointer, Richard-Harris, and 2019 is stacked with PGs in Louisiana so there was no need. She could have used Weber on the wing but she did tear her ACL during her junior season, which could also have affected them recruiting her. Whatever the case, teams in the SEC that are at the top have had McDonald's All-Americans from their state that has stayed home and helped build the program like Seimone did for LSU in the early 2000's. (Welsh, Coates, Wilson at USC), Vivians at State, Cunningham at Mizzou. All of these are important factors to why LSU is struggling. The state has been down in girl's basketball. Now a philosophy that I think she should stop doing is recruiting players from the same team and taking the lesser player thinking it will get the higher recruit. Norton and Rellah Booth both played in Jacksonville together, Mitchell played with Asia Durr on the same AAU team, Richard-Harris with some girls she missed out on from Houston. She seems to make the top prospects top 10 but it falls apart at the end of the recruiting process.

Realistic expectations for this program: Top 4 finish each year in the SEC
Sweet 16 appearance consistently or every other year, Top 25 recruiting class each year, Improved 3 point shooting (makes and percentage, 84 with less than 30% accuracy is not good), Improved FT shooting (anything below 70 is not good), Improved Basketball IQ, Improved Foot work (all of the post players), Discipline and toughness, a Designated Recruiting Coordinator (and he/she needs to be young because who holds that title now, Butts or DeMoss).

I love DeMoss but she's been back in Louisiana for less than 5 years, she does not know all of the HS coaches these days as before and she wasn't even the recruiting coordinator at Tech with Tyler. So if she is that at LSU, it's gonna take some time that we do not have.

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