Tag Archives: LSU Sports
Miles 28th Best Coach in the Nation
Well hello all. I know it’s been a while but unfortunately we LSUtopians have to hold day jobs to keep bringing you these literary masterpieces each day, so we’re a little behind. I came across a story the other day on Rivals that ranked Les “The Hat” Miles as the 28th best coach in the nation. It was a great showing for SEC coaches with 6 in the top 30, but I found myself wondering if that was an appropriate rank or should Les be higher in the coaching food chain and the answer is…..I had no idea (kick ass run-on sentence, eat me!). My gut reaction was to think he was hosed and should be in the top ten due to stats like this: three straight 10 wins seasons, 4 – 0 in bowl games, an SEC Championship, oh, and that little National Championship thingy. After I removed my purple and gold blinders, I started to wonder if Lesticles could win with the talent that Jim Leavitt at USF, Greg Schiano at Rutgers or Mark “Me Hungry” Mangino at Kansas had to work with (all actual AP photos of these coaches). And hey, it’s easy to rag on Les, just look at the picture at the top of this post and listen to his interviews and that’s not what I ‘m looking to do. jump
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Priority Point Reminder
Just a quick reminder from your friends here at LSUtopia that the LSU Priority Point deadline is March 31st. So be sure to hand over your donate your cash in hopes to get bumped up the list. If you don’t know what a priority point is, here’s a wonderful explanation of what it actually is to us regular folk, written by the most handsome, smart and funny man I know – me. If you didn’t like that, here’s the actual TAF breakdown and here’s the Tradition Fund fees with the seating chart. Good luck to everyone clawing their way up the seemly never ending Priority Point ladder.
ESPN Tourney Challenge Update
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Going in to the Sweet Sixteen we have one person sitting atop the leader board in the LSUtopia ESPN Tournament Challenge. So how does it feel to have sold your soul to the Devil, POPATOPJAM? My usual supernatural witchcraft has not worked this year at all and sacrificing chickens (no, it’s not a video of chicken genocide, you weirdo) to the Bracket gods is a dirty business; moving on to goats next year. After Wake Forest butt humped pretty much everyone’s Sweet Sixteen match ups, we are all still looking pretty good with our Elite Eight picks. This hasn’t been too tricky of a year and some people, i.e. yours truly, tried to over think some of the pairings and it bit them in the tush. But we do have a tight race for the top spot between: POPATOPJAM(560), amycomeaux 1(550), lsuetg 1(540) and CMLT for 3(540) and it could still go to any one of them. So congrats, so far, to the front runners. Whoever does finally pull out the win will get a signed copy of my losing bracket with a personal message. Something along the lines of: “you cheating bastard, there’s a special place for you in hell for beating me! All the best, Undefeated” or something really sweet like that.
Don’t Count Us Out Yet
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So we made it past Butler and are now rewarded with playing North Carolina in North Carolina, but don’t count us out quite yet. (even though I did in the first round versus Butler!) We played NCAA basketball royalty killer back in 2006 and could very well do it again this year.
There was no way our Tigers were going to beat the all mighty Duke Blue Devils to reach the Elite 8 and eventually the Final Four. But we did, with play that is very similar to how this team has played all year: hustle, heart and defense. Garrett Temple completely shut down national sweetie pie Gay Gay Redick (remember this pic?) and Coach K (is it me, or does his mouth look like an anus? sorry, had to ask, I’ll get on to Lou Holtz’s mouth in the football season) and there was just enough scoring from our offense to seal the win. Read the 2006 game recap here. Keep reading, I’m not done with you yet.
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Coach Johnson and Marcus Thornton Win Top SEC Honors
For their extraordinary efforts and achievements this year in basketball, Coach Trent Johnson and Marcus Thornton brought home top individual SEC awards. Coach Johnson won the SEC Coach of the Year and Thornton won the SEC Player of the Year.
Both are absolutely deserving of the honors. Johnson took a 13-18 team from a year ago and turned them into the best team in the entire SEC. The Tigers finished the regular season with a 25-6 overall record and a 13-3 conference record. LSU lost its first SEC game to Bama and lost its last two to Vanderbilt and Auburn, but won 13 SEC games in a row in between. Coach had his players focused and playing hard ’til the end in each of those games. He brought out the best in his players and that is what a great coach does. Johnson has now won Coaching honors in three different leagues; SEC, Pac-10 with Stanford, and the WAC with Nevada. More after the jump….
Marcus Thornton averaged 20.9 points per game along with 5.5 rebounds, 2.1 assists,and 1.6 steals. Other players in the league may have had better stats in each category, but Thornton was the best player on the best team and that aways counts a lot in the determination of these awards. It’s the equivalent of the NBA’s MVP award and Thornton certainly was the MVP this year. Countless times, he put the Tigers on his back and took control of games. He averaged 35 minutes per SEC game (reminder: this includes 49 in 2OT vs. State, 2-11-09 as well as his lowest, 23 minutes in the blowout vs. S. Carolina, ). This minutes per SEC game stat is not calculated by anyone, so without doing it for every player, I just calculated Jodie Meeks from UK and foundThornton is behind Meeks by only 1.3 minutes per game.
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Bad Weekend for LSU Tigers
What else can you say? What looked to be a fun-filled, winning weekend for LSU and fans, turned out to be nothing we had hoped for at all.
The Baseball team dropped 2 of 3 to what was said to be an average Illinois team. Friday night 3-1 and Sunday 6-2. However, the Tigers did hit three grand slams (Leon Landry, Micah Gibbs, and Nicholas Pontiff) in the 22-10 win Saturday….tying a record with 8 other teams, but the first to do it in the SEC. Tyler Hanover, Sean Ochinko, and Grant Dozar also added home runs along with Landry who had another bomb. The Tigers begin SEC play this weekend with Kentucky at the Box, but not before taking on Southeastern LA in Hammond Tuesday night and ULL in Baton Rouge Wednesday night. More after the jump……
The Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams both lost on Saturday. The men to Auburn in Auburn and the women to #22 Vanderbilt in the 3rd round of the SEC Tournament in Little Rock, AR. That’s not the way either team would have liked to return to Baton Rouge. The men better come up with something as their SEC tourney begins this week and they will take on the winner of Ole Miss and Kentucky Friday at 1pm. Here is the tournament bracket.
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Jam-Packed Weekend for LSU Sports Begins Today
It all starts this afternoon as the LSU Men’s Tennis team takes on Auburn at 2pm in “Dub” Robinson Stadium. The Tennis team hasn’t gotten much pub this year, but they are ranked #14 in the country as SEC gears up to start today. The team is led by Senior Michael Venus, who is ranked #9 in the country’s top singles players. Along with freshman, Neal Skupski from Liverpool, they are the #13 doubles team. Auburn comes equipped with the #11 doubles team and should prove for a tough match for the LSU duo. Senior James Clusky from Ireland has also been playing well. The Tigers will also host #20 Alabama on Sunday at 1pm. If you’re in town and not busy, head over there today or after the baseball game Sunday, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Later tonight, the LSU Baseball Tigers will begin a three-game series with the Big Ten’s Illinois at 7pm at Alex Box. LSU is red hot to start the season outscoring opponents 109-25 in nine games so far. Also, all of LSU’ starting position players are hitting over .300. The Tigers are undefeated and are the #1 team in all the land in 3 different polls this week (Baseball America, Collegiate Baseball, and USA Today/ESPN). The Tigers will play on Saturday at 2pm and again on Sunday at 11am…have a bloody mary and go experience the Tigers win again in the new “Box”. More after the jump……
The women’s basketball will be playing Miss. St. in the second round of the SEC tournament tonight at 9pm. The ladies are 17-9, 10-4 this season having won 8 of their last 10. Much like the men, the women are overachieving this year as well. If they win, they will play the winner of Georgia-Vanderbilt on Saturday at 8pm. If they win that, they will play for the championship to be held at 6:30 on Sunday. all games are being played at Little Rock, AR’s Alltel Arena.
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Louisiana’s Mount Rushmore of Sports
No, the title isn’t the new sexual position discussed on the Howard Stern show, instead, over the past several weeks ESPN has aired a segment that showcases each state’s Mount Rushmore of sports, as voted on by the people. Several Tigers were nominated including: Skip Bertman, Billy Cannon, Dale Brown and Bert Jones but after all the votes were counted, two former LSU Tigers made the prestigious list of four. Shaquille O’Neal and “Pistol” Pete Maravich made the cut along with Bill Russell (who the hell knew he was from Monroe, La?!) and Terry Bradshaw. Not too shabby of a monument if I do say so myself.
*Op-ed piece completely unrelated to LSU or sports at all, after jump*
Don’t piss off chimpanzees. Apparently they’ll try to eat your face and your wiener. That is all.
