LSU Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Will Wade as head coach
By Joey Loose
Damon Stoudamire
Young mid-major coaches are great and everything, but why don’t we expand our horizons a little bit? We’ve got ourselves a coach who starred at the NBA level, did great things in college as a player, assistant, and head coach, and who has spent this last season on an NBA coaching staff. Stoudamire checks a lot of experience boxes and wouldn’t be a bad hire at all.
Stoudamire starred at point guard for Arizona and spent 13 years playing in the NBA. He’s been an assistant at Memphis and Arizona, plus with the Grizzlies and Celtics in the NBA. Some of his most impressive work came in a recent 5-year stint as head coach at Pacific, a team often left for dead in a very tough WCC. Before leaving for the Celtics, Stoudamire led the Tigers to a pair of Top 5 finishes in the WCC; a major step forward for that program.
LSU isn’t going to land one of the Scott Drews of the world, but Stoudamire is an intriguing name for many reasons. He was patient enough to build some success at Pacific and he could certainly build the Tigers back into a contender after a few years of dealing with these upcoming sanctions. His experience at the NBA is also valuable, especially to young recruits.