Johnson has been a successful coach at Stanford but may be motivated to leave in part because next year's team won't be nearly as talented as the one he led to the Sweet 16 last year. With the Lopez twins leaving for the NBA, Stanford was already going to look a lot different next season. The new Stanford coach will have a tough job ahead of him.
There have been rumors of discontent with the way Coach John Brady runs his basketball program. They've never been loud rumblings or else Brady would never have coached for 10 years at LSU. It's just the stories of being a little thin-skinned, not big on taking blame, and not shy about complaining about his contract. Still, Brady has landed numerous talented recruits the last several years and is only a year removed from a Final Four appearance.
Even with the losses of LaMarcus Aldridge Darrel Mitchell and Tyrus Thomas, LSU was supposed to at least be an NCAA Tournament team. A very disappointing follow-up season -- in part because of some key injuries -- has brought some of the rumblings closer to the surface. Especially as highly recruited players have failed to develop, keep up their academics, and/or several transfers elsewhere.
This past season saw the dismissal of Tack Minor from the team for academic reasons. Back-up point guard, Sophomore Ben Voogd left the team and the Oregon native is going to walk-on at Washington State. Glenn Davis left school early to enter the NBA Draft. Now Magnum Rolle has announced his intent to transfer. The good news, that means lots of open scholarships to offer for 2008.
Carla Berry, the LSU women's basketball assistant coach who informed the school's administration about a sexual relationship between head coach Pokey Chatman and a player, has announced that she is leaving the coaching profession.
For both Berry and Chatman (pictured), it's sad that their great basketball careers -- as players and coaches at LSU -- have ended like this. For its part, LSU made clear that Berry is leaving of her own volition, and associate athletic director Judy Southard criticized some media reports that characterized LSU as wanting Berry out.
"There is an implication that LSU does not want her back," Southard said. "That's not true. We very clearly supported Carla when she came forward. We still support her."
That may be true, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Berry is leaving the coaching profession mostly because of the strain caused by this incident. And that's a shame. Berry is an honorable person who did the right thing when she found out about dishonorable conduct by her boss.
This one has been in the works for a while, but it's finally been announced. The Big East and SEC will play a limited challenge series over the next several years. I'm sorry, they are calling it an Invitational. It will be a four game rotation for the next four years.
The games will take place on December 5-6. On December 5, two games will be played at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center in Birmingham Alabama. The two games will be: West Virginia-Auburn and Georgetown-Alabama. On December 6, the games will be at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That will have South Carolina-Providence and LSU-Villanova. The games will be aired on ESPN2 and ESPN.
"This Invitational will showcase two of the premier conferences in college basketball," said Pete Derzis, senior vice president and general manager of ESPN Regional Television. "Both conferences compete at the highest level, as evidenced by their recent appearances in the Final Four, and we are pleased to feature them on two consecutive nights on our networks."
Of course, only 2 of the Big East teams selected for next year were in the NCAA Tournament and none of the SEC schools even made the NIT.
How do the teams get picked each year? Well, that gets left to ESPN "in consultation" with the conferences. Considering ESPN will be handling the "Big East/SEC Invitational's organization, operation, sponsorship, marketing efforts and more," I'm guessing the consultations pretty much follow whatever ESPN tells the conferences to do.
A long ESPN.com piece on the LSU women's basketball team examines the repercussions of coach Pokey Chatman's resignation. Specifically, assistant coach Carla Berry might have damaged her own career when she told the LSU administration that Chatman had a sexual relationship with a former player. Berry might not be back at LSU next season, and if she's not, there's talk that other schools wouldn't want to hire her.
Berry might have an especially hard time passing the loyalty litmus.
"Two months ago if you would've called me and said Carla Berry from LSU [was interested], if I had an opening, we'd take her," said a Division I coach. "I would say unequivocally. Now ... I'd have to have a full-length conversation to understand why what happened happened to make her pull that trigger."
I think that's outrageous. Berry did the right thing -- the only ethical thing -- when she informed Chatman's bosses that Chatman had an inappropriate relationship. Any coach who wouldn't want Berry on the staff is saying allegiance to the coach is more important than allegiance to university rules.
Pokey Chatman, the LSU women's basketball coach who resigned this month after reports surfaced that she had a sexual relationship with a former player, will receive a $70,000 bonus because LSU advanced to the Final Four Monday night.
Chatman's contract with LSU contains various performance-based bonuses, including that $70,000 Final Four bonus, and she is being paid all salary and bonuses through the end of April, even though she left the team after an assistant coach brought the inappropriate relationship to light.
Interim head coach Bob Starkey, who stepped in and took over the team when Chatman left, led LSU to its regional final victory over Connecticut last night. But he won't get paid as much for reaching the Final Four as Chatman will.
Although no story can match Chatman's resignation in terms of bad news for women's basketball this season, more bad news came in the form of the attendance figures Monday night: The arena in Fresno has a capacity of more than 15,000, but the LSU-Connecticut game attracted just 3,046 fans. Those numbers show that while women's basketball is popular on many campuses, it hasn't yet reached the point where large numbers of fans will travel to see their teams.
LSU's Pokey Chatman is not the first women's basketball coach to resign because of a sexual relationship with one of her players. In 1982, Pam Parsons, the women's basketball coach at the University of South Carolina, resigned after it came to light that she had a sexual relationship with one of her players, Tina Buck, who was 17 at the time the relationship began.
"I felt for her," Parsons said, referring to Chatman. "Oh, my God, I felt for her. Because, I mean, it puts you in the position of reflecting for a moment what that felt like when you fell so far from grace. And to fall that far from grace, you hope that no other human has to face that."
Times have changed quite a bit since Parsons lost her job: In 1982 the mere fact that she was a lesbian was in many ways seen as the scandal. Parsons and Buck both sued Sports Illustrated for libel for publishing a story saying they were lesbians, and both ended up going to jail for four months for perjury when it became clear that they lied under oath during that trial by saying they were not lesbians.
I hope that now that we're in 2007, we understand that what's inappropriate here is that Parsons and Chatman had sexual relationships with young people they were hired to coach. I don't know if Chatman has been treated the same way a male coach who had a sexual relationship with a player would be treated, but she should be.
Note: The picture of Parsons was taken as she testified to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Clinton's impeachment revolved around lying under oath about a sexual relationship, and Parsons was asked to testify because she knows something about lying under oath about a sexual relationship.
Like most college coaches, Pokey Chatman had a buyout clause in her contract as the LSU women's basketball coach. The way the clause works is that if the coach chooses to leave the school before the full term of the contract has been fulfilled, he or she has to pay money to the school. These clauses usually come into play when a coach quits to take a job at another school.
Chatman's buyout clause said that if she quit, she had to pay $200,000 per year remaining on her contract. Since Chatman resigned last week with two years left on her deal, she should owe the school $400,000.
But LSU "opted not to enforce" that clause in the contract, said senior associate athletic director Herb Vincent. That just makes no sense to me at all. Chatman has resigned because of a sexual relationship with a player. That's serious misconduct, the kind of thing that presumably would have gotten her fired if she hadn't resigned first. Why on earth should LSU let her out of that part of her contract, given her own misconduct?
LSU is also continuing to pay Chatman her salary through the remainder of the season, and she will receive a $70,000 bonus if the team makes the Final Four, even though she won't be the coach who gets them there. All in all, Chatman seems as though she's getting awfully good treatment for a coach who behaved awfully badly.
Eleven months ago Glen Davis was at the top of the college basketball world. He had led LSU to the Final Four, and everyone wanted to know if he'd leave for the NBA. He didn't leave, and lots of people thought LSU would make a return trip to the Final Four. And now not only are the Tigers not headed to the Final Four, they're not even headed to the NIT.
So will Davis, now a junior, turn pro this year? LSU fans want Big Baby to stay, but he tells Luke Winn of SI.com that he's leaning toward it. Sadly, it seems too late. His disappointing junior season has to have NBA teams wondering if he can cut it at the next level, and he's projected as a second-round pick. It's entirely possible that he'll be told he needs to spend some time in the Developmental League, especially if he can't get his 6-foot-9, 295-pound body in better shape.
Davis was never seen as a can't-miss NBA prospect, but he certainly would have been drafted higher last year than he will be this year. A lot of other prospects could learn something from him.
POSTSCRIPT: I honestly wonder if Davis wouldn't be better off trying to switch to football. He was a fairly good high school football player, and when he was in high school, Rivals.com listed his announcement that he would play basketball instead of football as one of the top 10 surprise decisions of the year. Winn is one of many writers who have praised him for how hard he's worked to lose weight, and yet he's still too fat for basketball -- maybe that's his body's way of telling him he's playing the wrong sport.
LSU learned that its women's basketball coach, Pokey Chatman, had a sexual relationship with a player when one of Chatman's assistant coaches told school officials, ESPN.com reports. The assistant, Carla Berry, is described as an old friend of Chatman's and is still working as an assistant to interim LSU coach Bob Starkey.
Berry's motivation for making the allegation to university officials isn't clear. One athletic department insider said that Chatman continued to seek advice from Berry, a longtime friend and colleague, as late as Thursday, the day after Chatman unexpectedly resigned her position as head coach. By then, the scandal was reaching critical mass.
LSU officials say they do not believe Chatman has had inappropriate relationships with any of her current players. It is not clear when the past relationships took place or how many players were involved. Chatman's contract calls for her to receive a $70,000 bonus if LSU reaches the Final Four. She'll still get that money if the team gets there under Starkey's leadership.
Stanford basketball coach Trent Johnson is leaving to take the head-coaching job at LSU, multiple media outlets are reporting. 
There have been rumors of discontent with the way Coach John Brady runs his basketball program. They've never been loud rumblings or else Brady would never have coached for 10 years at LSU. It's just the stories of being a little thin-skinned, not big on taking blame, and not shy about complaining about his contract. Still, Brady has landed numerous talented recruits the last several years and is only a year removed from a Final Four appearance.
Carla Berry, the LSU women's basketball assistant coach who informed the school's administration about a sexual relationship between head coach Pokey Chatman and a player, has 
This one has been in the works for a while, but it's finally been announced. The 
A long ESPN.com piece on the LSU women's basketball team examines the repercussions of coach Pokey Chatman's resignation. Specifically, assistant coach Carla Berry might have damaged her own career when she told the LSU administration that Chatman had a sexual relationship with a former player. Berry might not be back at LSU next season, and if she's not, there's talk that other schools wouldn't want to hire her. 
LSU's 
Eleven months ago Glen Davis was at the top of the college basketball world. He had led LSU to the Final Four, and everyone wanted to know if he'd leave for the NBA. He didn't leave, and lots of people thought LSU would make a return trip to the Final Four. And now not only are the Tigers not headed to the Final Four, they're not even headed to the NIT.
