LSU and coach Will Wade continue to add veteran head coaches to his staff ahead of his first season back in Baton Rouge.
The Tigers announced Monday the hiring of Damon Stoudamire, the former Arizona and NBA with eight yers of head coaching experience at Pacific and Georgia Tech, as the third assistant reported to be joining Wade in Baton Rouge.
Former Mississippi State and Western Kentucky coach Rick Stansbury and former LSU, North Texas and Texas Southern coach Johnny Jones had been reported as early as the day of Wade’s re-introduction event March 30 for fans and media and were both formally announced last week.
Stoudamire spent the past three seasons leading Georgia Tech with a 42-55 overall record, including 19-39 in the ACC and an NIT appearance in 2025, and holds a combined 113-132 overall head coaching mark.
He previously coached Pacific from 2016 to 2021, including a 2020 Ben Job National Coach of the Year recognition as the top minority coach at the Division-I level. His Tigers posted a 23-10 record that season, the program’s best in more than a decade and an improvement of nine wins from the previous season and 15 from the year before Stoudamire took over.
“We are happy to welcome Damon Stoudamire to the LSU Basketball family,” Wade said in a release. “His NBA success and his years of college basketball coaching experience brings a perspective to our coaching staff that will be very useful as we move forward.”
Stoudamire won more than 100 games as a college player at Arizona, including a pair of Pac-10 Conference championships in 1994 and 1995, a Final Four run and All-American First-Team selection in 1994 and Pac-10 Player of the Year honors and recognition as a John Wooden Award finalist in 1995.
The Toronto Raptors selected him No. 7 overall in the 1995 NBA Draft, the first pick in the expansion franchise’s history, to begin a 13-year career that included NBA Rookie of the Year honors, six playoff appearances and career averages of 13.4 points, 6.1 assists and 3.4 rebounds in 879 contests for Toronto, Portland, Memphis and San Antonio.
His early coaching career included time as Rice’s director of player development in 2008-09 and stints as an assistant for the Memphis Grizzles (2011-13) in the NBA and Memphis (2011-13, 2015-16) and Arizona (2013-15) in college before earning his first lead opportunity at Pacific.
Stoudamire late spent two more NBA seasons as an assistant for the Boston Celtics (2021-23) between his Pacific and Georgia Tech tenures.