PITTSBURGH – Do not expect a coaching clinic when Johnny Jones’ LSU basketball team and Mark Gottfried’s North Carolina State unit start tossing Xs and Os around here Thursday night in the NCAA Tournament.
Each will likely put the Xs and the Os on ice when the Tigers and Wolfpack play in the Consol Energy Center — home of the Pittsburgh Penguins professional hockey team.
Xs and Os are not for everybody. And often the fans — particularly the casual ones as opposed to the leather nerds who demand seven passes before a shot — benefit from watching those type coaches’ teams play through sheer enjoyment.
Such was the case on Feb. 3, 1990, when LSU beat Loyola Marymount, 148-141, in overtime, but do not misunderstand. There was only one overtime, and it was 134-134 at the half. Fittingly, the game was played in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Pistol had died three years earlier, but he would have loved it.
Loyola Marymount coach Paul Westhead’s team was averaging 121 points a game in an offense ahead of its time, and LSU coach Dale Brown decided to run with the Lions — as he often did throughout his life — to the delight of everyone who saw it in a game that would have gone down as one of the greatest ever in the NCAA Tournament — if it had been in the NCAA Tournament. Both coaches let players like the late Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble of Loyola Marymount and Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Jackson of LSU play.
“What did you think of that?” Brown asked exuberantly when he saw a few reporters leaving the arena hours later. “It was better than that crap you saw the other day.”
Brown was talking about a 79-77 LSU win at Ole Miss a few days prior.
“I wish we had games like this all time,” he said. Brown could X and O when he wanted to as well as anyone at times. He just didn’t want to all the time.
We will not see 148-141 Thursday night, but Jones and Gottfried let their players play. LSU averages 72.5 points a game, North Carolina State scores 70.4 a game. They do not have the players Westhead and Brown had by any means, but there will be talent on the floor. And passing before shooting will likely be at a minimum.
“You know, I’m not one of those guys that is not over the top with analytics,” Gottfried said. “I look at some things.”
Jones is not checking the metrics either. Asked if he was considering any special drills or visits by free-throw shooting experts after his team missed 19 of 44 free throws in the loss at Auburn last week and seemed casual doing so, Jones did not seem the least bit concerned.
Gottfried and Jones seem to think a coach usually cannot do much once the basketball goes up, and they’re not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. And often, they are right. Other coaches have vastly different approaches. Some are successful. Others are not.
Gottfried and Jones are both successful whether they can diagram plays with Bobby Knight or not. Some of the coaches who can eat, sleep and use the bathroom with Xs and Os are good at it. Others are either no longer coaching or will not be for long. But, boy, they know the game.
Gottfried, who was constantly criticized for strategy issues before being shown the door at Alabama in 2009, has rebuilt a struggling North Carolina State program that missed five straight NCAA Tournaments before his arrival. He has the Wolfpack at its fourth straight Big Dance. Oh, and he beat Duke this year and won at North Carolina this year.
Jones, meanwhile, is the first coach in LSU history to put the Tigers in back-to-back national tournaments in his first three years on the job. He is also the first LSU coach to have three consecutive winning seasons overall and three straight years without a losing season in SEC play since John Brady had four of those from 2002-03 through 2005-06 with a Final Four in ’06.
People ridicule Gottfried’s and Jones’ Xs and Os, but it is hard to argue with their Ws and Ls.
Daddy Dale endured the same criticism as he went to 10 straight NCAA Tournaments from 1984-93. The same coaches who liked to make fun of him and say how much more talented his teams were had to end up watching him in the Final Four twice and the Elite Eight another two times. Brown also usually fielded some of the most entertaining teams in the country.
Gottfried and Jones — like Brown — know how to attract players and get them to play for them. They know how to entertain. That will take them farther than a chalkboard may take others.
Jones played and coached under Brown at LSU and is already — in just his third year — attracting the kind of talent Brown did. Look out next year when 6-foot-9 freshman forward Ben Simmons and 6-3 freshman guard Antonio Blakeney — two of the best prep prospects in the country — join Jones along with 6-9 Arizona transfer Craig Victor.
It is no wonder Gottfried, who played for Wimp Sanderson at Alabama in the mid-1980s just after Jones played for Brown at LSU in the early 1980s, nearly decided to coach under Brown at LSU in the 1990s when he was an assistant at UCLA. He wanted to learn from one of the best. Jones recommended him to Brown.
“Even though I was an opponent of LSU, from a distance you always liked that guy,” Gottfried said. “I always liked coach Brown. I always had an affinity for him and still do to this day. It was something back then I thought about doing.”
Gottfried instead stayed at UCLA and helped Jim Harrick win a national title, then got the head coaching job at Murray State, which he took to the NCAA Tournament in 1997 and ’98 before getting the Alabama job. Jones took North Texas to a pair of NCAA Tournaments in the 2000s before getting the LSU job.
These two sons of the SEC will meet Thursday night as head coaches for the first time, and a proud Daddy Dale will be in the house.
There should be a lot of offense as well as some questionable execution and maybe a few bad inbounds plays and many missed free throws. But it should be a lot of fun.
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