Long: ‘The expectations at Louisiana Tech are a little extreme’|Women’s basketball

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Parity has brought tremendous exposure and opportunities to the world of women’s college basketball.

On Monday, it may have claimed a victim.

Vicksburg native Chris Long was fired as Louisiana Tech’s coach, cutting short his fourth season in the job. Louisiana Tech picked associate head coach Teresa Weatherspoon to serve as interim head coach for the rest of the season.

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Long went 71-44 in his three years-plus, but the Lady Techsters were just 12-11 this season and haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2006.

For a program that was among the best in the nation for a quarter-century, the mini-slump was tough to take.

“I was coach of the year in 2006. We won two WAC championships. The expectations at Louisiana Tech are a little extreme,” Long said in a telephone interview Monday night. “They want you to go very, very deep in the NCAA Tournament every year, and that’s a little unrealistic at this point in time in women’s basketball.”

Weatherspoon was part of Tech’s back-to-back Final Four teams in 1987 and ‘88 — the ‘88 team won the school’s third and last national championship — and helped build a strong tradition of success in Ruston.

Tech made 25 straight NCAA tournament appearances from 1982 to 2006, and continued that run when Long took over as head coach before the 2005-06 season. He had spent the previous six years as a Tech assistant, after two seasons as Vicksburg High’s head coach. Long also served as a coach at Vicksburg Junior High from 1993-97.

Tech won the Western Athletic Conference regular season championship in 2006 and 2007, and the conference’s tournament in 2006. Eventually, however, other programs started to catch up. It lost to Florida State in the first round of the 2006 NCAA tournament and failed to make it to the big dance the last two years.

From 1982 to 2005, Tech had made it to at least the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 21 of 23 appearances, and won at least 20 games in all but one season. The Lady Techsters were fourth in the WAC in the 2007-08 season, the first time in 15 years they hadn’t won either a regular season or tournament championship within their conference.

Tech was 7-7 against a tough nonconference schedule this season — it played LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Virginia, Western Kentucky and Arizona in the early going — and was 5-4 and in fifth place in the WAC after a 66-61 loss to Boise State on Sunday. Tech has won four of its last six games.

“These decisions are very difficult to make and are not made without careful consideration of all the facts and implications,” Derek Dooley, Louisiana Tech’s athletic director, said in a release from the school.

Long said he was obviously disappointed with the move, but proud of what he had accomplished in his decade with the school. He said he was also satisfied that he was leaving the program in good shape.

“I feel like I’m leaving the program in better shape than I found it,” he said. ��We signed five or six state players of the year, a JUCO player that was No. 9 in the country, a number of Gatorade players of the year. We’re doing that against SEC, Big 12 and ACC schools. I’m very proud of what we’ve done. I’ve had some great experiences.”

What experience Long looks for next is unclear. The 40-year-old has spent a decade in Ruston, and wasn’t yet sure whether he’d look for another college job, a pro job or even a high school job.

“I hadn’t had much time to think about it,” Long said. “I feel like I’ll stay in coaching. I’ll bounce back.”

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Contact Ernest Bowker at ebowker@vicksburgpost.com.