re: You guys bashing Woody for the men’s bball hire are crazy

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The last time we had a AD like Woody, Bottom Line Bob. Some of you younger folks might want to look up Bob Broadhead, see who he hired

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That's not really a great comp IMO. Broadhead, notably, hired Bertman, then an assistant coach at Miami. He also hired Arnsparger, then a DC for the Dolphins who had never been a HC and had not coached in the college game in 20 years. Hell, maybe the best thing for LSU Broadhead did was become the CFO of the Dolphins. That gave him local access to Arnsparger and Bertman.

Neither of those guys had a championship college pedigree to draw from when they were hired. That's far different than the approach Woodward has generally taken. His approach has been to find someone who has already had proven success at the highest level and try to get them in. In fairness, that is a GREAT strategy. There are zero guarantees in coaching hires. You're left with trying to predict future results with the best data available at the time. If someone has already proven themselves there is less of a risk for failure.

But you have to also be able to acknowledge LSU MBB is in a different category than football and baseball now. Those two sports have relatively recent championship pedigrees to sell and a desire by the university to invest heavily. In short, LSU football and baseball are attractive jobs to ALL coaches. Basketball isn't. Despite the demi-god status some have attributed to Woodward, even under normal circumstances he was not going to pull a Tom Izzo from Michigan St, Bill Self from Kansas, Jay Wright from Villanova, etc. He was/is going to have to be more like Arnsparger and identify the "off the radar candidate" unless a big name falls in his lap (which it did in Chris Beard, but he passed)

The bottom line is his MO was available in football, baseball and WBB (because Mulkey is a LA native) and he executed. Give him immense credit for that because the ding-dong before him wouldn't have. That option wasn't available in basketball and thus far there is legitimate reason to be concerned about his hire.

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That's not really a great comp IMO. Broadhead, notably, hired Bertman, then an assistant coach at Miami. He also hired Arnsparger, then a DC for the Dolphins who had never been a HC and had not coached in the college game in 20 years. Hell, maybe the best thing for LSU Broadhead did was become the CFO of the Dolphins. That gave him local access to Arnsparger and Bertman. Neither of those guys had a championship college pedigree to draw from when they were hired. That's far different than the approach Woodward has generally taken. His approach has been to find someone who has already had proven success at the highest level and try to get them in. In fairness, that is a GREAT strategy. There are zero guarantees in coaching hires. You're left with trying to predict future results with the best data available at the time. If someone has already proven themselves there is less of a risk for failure

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I understand what you are saying, but like Bob, Woody does his homework, finds the right fit, knows where he wants a program. Skip, I was making games way before Skip was winning games. Bob knew Skip would improve LSU Baseball.

As for Arnsparger, didn’t take long to see he was all business. Too bad he didn’t last longer, I’ve seen a few of his staff, over the years. They brought in a good staff and really good players. A great mix.

Bob was good at what he did. Woody is good at what he does. Woody spent time with Mark Emmert, that’s a plus.

The most proven Coach LSU has hired, Kim, she has the resume.

Bo Rein was an up and coming Coach, much like Nick Saban, when he got to LSU. I would have like to have seen what Bo would have done at LSU. A great writeup on Bo.

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