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Inside College Basketball
Posted: Tuesday January 04, 2000 05:34 PM Though undermanned due to NCAA probation, LSU is growling again By B.J. Schecter
An hour after Louisiana State's 63-53 victory in the Sugar Bowl Classic over previously unbeaten Oklahoma State last Thursday, LSU coach John Brady stood in an empty New Orleans Arena and talked about the struggle to turn around a once-proud program that hasn't had a winning record since 1992-93. "Over the last two years no team in college basketball has been working under the conditions we've worked under," said Brady, whose Tigers improved to 12-0 with the victory over the Cowboys. "We've been harshly penalized for something that nobody currently in this program had anything to do with. We've had to work harder with fewer players, but we just beat the 11th-ranked team in the country. That says a great deal about how far we've come."
Despite having only nine players on scholarship, LSU, which went 12-15 last season and was picked to finish fifth in the SEC West this year in a preseason poll of conference media members, is off to its best start since 1985-86, the year the Tigers last went to the Final Four. This week LSU moved into the AP's Top 25 -- at No. 21 -- for the first time since '93. The Tigers were also one of only three teams that were still unbeaten through Sunday. The key to the resurgence has been 6'9" sophomore forward Stromile Swift, who may be the most improved player in the nation after a disappointing freshman season. He arrived at LSU in the fall of 1998 but was ineligible to play because he didn't have the requisite standardized test score. He briefly thought about leaving for the NBA until he scored high enough on his last shot at the ACT test, in December '98, and was cleared to play last January. After just two practices Swift played his first game. He struggled in that outing and for much of the rest of the season, averaging 7.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.2 blocks. "I was out of shape and never got into the flow of things," says Swift, who didn't start playing basketball until the eighth grade but was a consensus All-America at Shreveport's Fair Park High in his senior year. "The whole season was like a blur. When it was over, I dedicated myself to proving that I was a much better player than I'd showed." He has done just that. Through Sunday he was averaging 19.5 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.8 blocks while shooting an eye-popping 68.7% from the field. Having added 25 pounds to what was a woefully thin frame, the 225-pound Swift is a pogo stick of a small forward who creates matchup problems for most teams, which need two or three players to stop him. Against Oklahoma State his inside presence helped junior guard Lamont Roland -- last year's junior college player of the year at Barton (Kans.) Community College -- score a game-high 22 points. Jabari Smith, LSU's 6'11" senior center, also chipped in with 11 rebounds as the bigger Tigers outrebounded the Cowboys 45-29. Even with this early success, Brady, who had been the coach at Samford for six seasons before replacing Dale Brown at LSU, isn't sure how good his Tigers are. Outside of the Oklahoma State game, LSU has played a soft schedule, but with games against Tennessee, Florida and Arizona in the next three weeks, Brady will soon find out what he has got. "This shows we're headed in the right direction and that we're ready to compete in the SEC," said Brady, "but we still have a lot ahead of us." Issue date: January 10, 1999
For more Inside College Basketball see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, January 5. Click here to subscribe to SI.
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