LSU Shreveport’s “out of the norm” coaching situation paying big dividends

NEW ORLEANS – LSU Shreveport was preparing to start the basketball season last October when it suddenly found itself without a coach for its women’s team.

Matt Strickland resigned for personal reasons, leaving athletic director Lucas Morgan with “a challenge” to “try to pull somebody away from a school that they were already at.”

But he thought he might be able to fill the position with a really impressive candidate that already was at a school – men’s head coach Kyle Blankenship, who has led LSUS to the NAIA national tournament in each of his 11 seasons (including two trips to the Fab Four).

The AD recognized that what he was going to suggest to Blankenship was “a little out of the norm.”

Still he went ahead and proposed that the Pilots men’s basketball coach also become the Pilots women’s basketball coach.

“I didn’t know that there was going to be any possible way that we could make it happen,” Blankenship recalled, “just to do with all the logistics of the numbers of practices and the different games, especially in non-conference play.”

Morgan wasn’t done, though.

He compared the men’s and women’s basketball schedules and realized there was only one conflict, which would force Blankenship to miss a single early-season women’s game.

“When you look at our schedule,” Morgan said, “you would have thought that we planned this.”

Of course they didn’t, but the symmetry between the schedules “grabbed my attention a little bit more,” Blankenship said.

With the scheduling hurdle cleared, the coach needed to consult with his wife and family as well as his coaching staff.

Everyone was confident that Blankenship could make it work and the reaction of Blankenship’s wife, who was out of town, to his text summed up everyone’s response: “Let’s do it!!!”

The next day the team that was the preseason pick to win their conference (as were the men) gathered in the locker room to meet with their new head coach 10 days before the start of the season.

The players on the women’s team knew Blankenship and his track record, which also included five Red River Athletic Conference regular-season championships and three conference tournament championships.

“My initial reaction,” guard Tiarra Tillison said, “was, ‘Oh, my gosh. He’s been here 12 seasons and he’s got a lot of rings. Maybe I can get one.’”

She and her teammates got a RRAC regular-season championship after defeating Xavier 67-61 on Thursday night at The Convocation Center. They extended their winning streak to 22 and improved to 24-2 and 20-0 in the conference after a 90-74 victory against North American University on Saturday in Stafford, Texas.

The men bounced back from an 89-67 loss to Xavier to defeat North American and improve to 19-7, 14-6.

“I think this is as much as we could have asked for,” Morgan said, “and potentially more.”

Blankenship said that if he had been told back in October what the teams’ records would be at this point, he probably would have expected them to be “flipped – just due to the circumstances.”

Even Tillison, who’s from Slidell and played at Northshore High School, had mixed feelings, just like most everyone affected by the move.

“The positive was that he’s a good coach,” Tillison said. “I was just skeptical about whether he was going to have enough time for both programs.”

Neither Morgan nor Blankenship was aware of another four-year college basketball program that has had the same person coaching both its men’s and women’s team.

Morgan said that if he had had enough time to conduct a traditional coaching search “I don’t think we probably would have gone this route.”

Blankenship is the only LSUS coach who was on campus when Morgan was hired more than seven years ago. So he knew Blankenship well enough to realize that he wouldn’t treat the women’s team as a secondary responsibility.

“I knew that he would treat both teams the same,” Morgan said. “I knew that he was going to take this very seriously. And he’s done that. You would not be able to tell that he wasn’t the women’s coach before this season started by watching him on the sideline with the student athletes.”

Tillison routinely arrives early for the women’s practice and is able to observe the men’s practices.

“It’s the same drills, the same pace, the same amount of time,” she said. “If they go for an hour and a half, we go for an hour and a half. He gives equal time to both of us.”

Strickland had been an assistant under Blankenship so “there were some similarities” between the men’s and women’s programs “from an Xs and Os standpoint.”

“But we knew when we took over that, ultimately, we wanted to play at a little faster pace,” Blankenship said. “We wanted to pick up and pressure and play full-court defense, trap a little bit, mix it up with man and zone. And so in essence, it changed our practices and the intensity of how we were doing things.

“That was really kind of the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome, was just attacking day to day, each day in practice with a different level of intensity, knowing that we wanted to build up our conditioning to be able to play the way that style we’re playing right now.”

Devin Jackson, who has been an assistant under Blankenship for four years, “jumped over and started helping the women as well.”

“I think that speaks a tremendous amount to his character and his willingness to take on any role,” Blankenship said of Jackson. “He’s been by my side this whole entire time working with the women and I tell people all the time that there’s no possible way that I could have gotten this done without Devin Jackson.”

The women’s staff also includes Strickland’s assistant, Kirsten Fellows, whose presence has provided much-needed continuity that Blankenship said “has been very beneficial to our team.”

Tillison said the players “knew we had the talent” to win the conference title, but admitted that the timing of the coaching change made the players “skeptical” of whether it would actually happen.

“Then we lost our first game,” she added. “So we got punched in the mouth, but we’ve been on a roll ever since.”

The first game was a 79-72 overtime loss to Texas Wesleyan that came as Blankenship and the players were just getting acquainted. They won their next two games against Centenary and Dillard, then came the one conflict and Fellows coached the women’s team in a 74-57 loss at Rust College while Blankenship and Jackson were coaching the men’s team to a 73-71 road victory against Southwestern Assemblies of God University.

Blankenship and Jackson made the 350-mile drive from Waxahachie, Texas to Little Rock, Arkansas for the women’s game the next night against Philander Smith.

The Pilots bounced back strong in a 68-56 victory that opened the eyes of forward Derrica Gilbert, who’s from Minden, La.

“We didn’t dwell on the loss,” she said. “We played bad and then we turned around and played well against another good team.”

The loss to Rust came on November 16. The women have not lost since.

As the clock was winding down on win No. 20 a week and a half ago, Blankenship leaned over to one his players on the bench to let her know of the milestone.

“She just smiled real big and she was like, ‘Coach, I don’t know if anybody saw this coming,’” Blankenship recalled, “and I told her I did because I believed from day one we could do something special and they bought in and have done everything we’ve asked them to do.

“I’ve found so much joy in watching these girls not only grow as basketball players, but as young ladies and, and have put themselves in position to win a conference championship. I told everybody from day one that it’s not about me, and what I’m doing. It was about those girls in that room that were in a unique situation.”

Both teams have two more regular-season games. The men’s and women’s conference tournaments will be at the same site, allowing Blankenship to coach both teams.

But the NAIA tournament will be conducted at 16 on-campus sites, creating the possibility that the teams will be separated – if they both make it. In that event Blankenship would coach the men’s team – the job for which he was initially hired.

Even if Blankenship is unable to coach the women’s team, he will have left his imprint on it going into the post-season.

“This is my senior season and last year didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Gilbert said. “We lost in the first round of the national tournament. (The men) win a game in the national tournament almost every year. We knew (Blankenship) could do the same for us. We knew he could take us far.”

Whenever and wherever the teams’ seasons end, Morgan plans to conduct a search for a full-time head coach to take over the women’s program.

“I’m not sure that recruiting two teams, coaching two teams, practicing two teams, monitoring the academics of two teams is something that we would be able to sustain long term,” Morgan said.

While Morgan conducts his search, Blankenship has other plans that he already shared with his boss halfway through the season: “I’m gonna need a long vacation when this thing’s over.”