Friend of Athletic Network: Danny Broussard reflects on career after win No. 900

 Trey Labat, glabat@theadvertiser.com, The Advertiser, Jan. 14, 2016

 

St. Thomas More Coach Danny Broussard calls plays from the bench as STM plays Tioga in a 2014 game in Lafayette. (Photo: Advertiser file photo)

Through his 31 years of coaching at St. Thomas More, coach Danny Broussard has experienced his fair share of personal and school milestones.

But Tuesday night in New Iberia, Broussard reached one last milestone before one of his ultimate goals.

After beating Westgate on the road Tuesday night, Broussard reached 900 wins for his career to add to his cabinet of impressive coaching accomplishments.

Those include being named the district Coach of the Years 17 times, two state championships in 1986 and 2013, two Louisiana Coach of the Year awards and 10 Top 28 appearances.

Broussard said while he wished he could have gotten his 900th in front of the home fans at St. Thomas More, or even the weekend before in the Alario Center, he was glad to get it out of the way.

“I didn’t want to have the team to be worrying about it into district play and in the playoff push or anything like that,” Broussard said.

After winning his first state championship in 1986, Broussard joked he thought the job was easy and he would be able to rip off plenty more of them before eventually retiring.

But there was always one goal he had in mind when he began: he wanted to reach 1,000 wins. And since the beginning he’s tracked the wins 100 at a time, including the one last night.

“I still have the fire, I still have the passion for the game, that hasn’t been any different,” Broussard said. “If I felt myself slowing down or thought I couldn’t be effective anymore I’d stop, but that hasn’t been the case so far.”

As with any extended coaching career, Broussard has several fond memories of games through the years.

Obviously, the two state championships, but Broussard said two others games stood out in his mind.

The first involved the biggest comeback in St. Thomas More history in 2007 in a game against Northside High.

The Vikings had just installed their new hardwood court and put it on the Cougars to begin the game and St. Thomas More went into halftime with a 20-point deficit.

“I didn’t really know what to say to the team at halftime, I mean what do you tell a team down by 20?” Broussard said. “So I just said let’s cut the lead to 10 in the third quarter and give ourselves a chance.

“We had a team of shooters that season and we just came out hot and got back into it.”

The game ended with a buzzer-beating 3-point shot from Tyler Seaux to win the game by one point and get Broussard one game closer to No. 1,000.

Another Broussard singled-out was for mostly personal reasons.

The Cougars were traveling to West Ouachita, who had won 31 straight home games and were considered the heavy favorite.

To make things worse, the West Ouachita school refused to move the game up in the day to make the travel afterward easy for the Cougars.

“That kind of frustrated me going into the game because it was a three or four hour drive for us,” Broussard said. “And they didn’t want to move it back because of something with the baseball team.”

Once at the gym, Broussard said his assistant coach, and current girls head coach, Stephen Strojny noticed the Cougar players dunking with ease during warm ups.

Dunking was not something many of the St. Thomas More players did with ease throughout that season.

“[Strojny] said, ‘Coach, I don’t think those goals are 10 feet,’” Broussard said. “So we asked the refs to measure them and they said they might be a little short, but that they were playable.

“The crowd and the coaches were getting annoyed by the whole situation and right before we start the game the announcer came on and said “Ladies and gentlemen, the goals are 10 feet.’”

Broussard said the game was tight throughout, but ended with what he thought was poetic justice.

The Cougars got a steal and heading toward the basket that was questioned before the game, Xavier Blackburn threw down a dunk to effectively end the contest.

“I couldn’t resist after the game when we were walking out I told the principal I bet he wished they had moved the game up,” Broussard joked.

And with 100 games still to go before his personal goal of 1,000, Broussard doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

“I still have the fire, I still have the passion for the game, that hasn’t been any different,” Broussard said. “If I felt myself slowing down or thought I couldn’t be effective anymore I’d stop, but that hasn’t been the case so far.”

Athletic Network Footnote by Ed Dugas:

Rickey Broussard, brother, former USL baseballer,and initial STM boys head basketball coach; Brent Broussard, brother and former USL baseballer; Danny Broussard, STM current boys head basketball coach, enjoy a special presentation after Danny’s 900th win. Photo by Paula Broussard, Rickey’s wife.