BATON ROUGE - LSU women's basketball coach Van Chancellor is expected to announce his retirement - either to begin immediately or after next season - at a press conference at 3 p.m. today.
LSU just released that it will have the press conference to make "an announcement regarding the future of the women's basketball program."
Chancellor, 67, just completed his fourth year as LSU's coach, and it was his most disappointing season. The Lady Tigers finished 19-13 and 8-8 in the Southeastern Conference and did not reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 1997-98 season. Chancellor's program has gradually gone down since he went 31-6 in his first year in 2007-08 and reached the Final Four.
Chancellor was never able to recruit the same quality talent he inherited in that first year from coach Pokey Chatman, who was fired near the end of the 2006-07 season because of improper relationships with players she had coached at LSU.
The Lady Tigers were 19-11 in the 2008-09 season and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament, snapping a string of five straight years in the Final Four - four with Chatman as coach. LSU went 21-10 in the 2009-10 season and again could not get past the second round of the NCAA Tournament.