Written for the LSWA
Sometimes it’s a good idea to listen to the advice of your older brothers.
There was one particular decision, though, St. Thomas More legendary boys basketball coach Danny Broussard is certainly glad he opted for his gut feeling instead.
After graduating from Meaux High in rural Vermilion Parish in 1977, Broussard’s first thought was to become a coach.
After all, his two older brothers Rickey and Brent were already coaches and the family was always heavily involved in athletics.
“They were kind of trying to talk me out of it,” Broussard said. “They said things like, ‘Oh, it’s tough, you don’t make a whole lot of money and it’s long hours, so why don’t you do something else?’”
So Broussard spent his entire freshman year at then-USL in Lafayette in general studies, hoping to decide what his future would hold along the way.
He thought about being a pharmacist. He always had a big personality and loved talking to and helping people.
“The only problem with that was pharmacy school was in Monroe and I didn’t want to go way up there and also there were too many chemistry courses,” Broussard said. “I was good at math, but not chemistry.”
After the second semester, his advisor came to him demanding a decision.
With no other favorable options in mind, Broussard said, “I’m going to education.”
Indeed, Broussard’s first thought was right on target.
Over four decades later, Broussard is entering the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame as one of the nation’s most successful coaches in the history of high school basketball. The Class of 2025 Induction Celebration is June 26-28 in Natchitoches, with event information available at LaSportsHall.com.
It wasn’t that his brothers didn’t think young Danny could coach. In fact, he had already proven he could.
As a senior at Meaux High, Broussard coached the school’s 4H basketball team to a tournament title in Kaplan.
“I found guys at Meaux,” he remembered. “We put together a little team of fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders and we won. That’s kind of when I got hooked. I remember thinking, ‘This is fun. I love this.’ Getting them together and preparing them and then seeing the results.”
Two years later, Broussard helped Tommy Picard coach a Babe Ruth youth baseball team to the state championship and before the team’s ace pitcher punctured a lung during the series, “I “I think we could have won regionals.”
Big brother Rickey wasn’t surprised by those early signs of success.
“I never had any doubt that Danny could accomplish great things,” said Rickey, who led Nicholls State’s basketball team to two NCAA Tournament appearances. “There was just something about him.”
Upon graduating college, young Danny faced another big decision.
Incredibly, he got an offer from Hanson Memorial in Franklin to be the program’s head basketball coach. Broussard asked for the weekend to ponder his options, although he was ready to accept the offer.
Once again, his older brother had other ideas. While Danny was communicating with Hanson, a math teacher at this new school St. Thomas More where Rickey was the head basketball coach decided to run the math department at Fatima instead just weeks before the start of school.
So Rickey implored his younger brother to talk to STM’s administration before accepting the Hanson Memorial job.
“They offered me $3-4,000 more a year to be a freshman baseball, basketball and football coach,” Broussard laughed. “That’s a lot of money to a kid right out of college, so I took it.”
As a football coach, things didn’t go very well. The Cougars’ freshman squad went 0-8 and didn’t score a point, but he showed promise in basketball.
Amazingly, another big decision was right around the corner.
Rickey’s assistant coach from Fatima, Stephen Rees, decided to head to medical school, so now Danny moved into the spot as the Cougars’ top basketball assistant.
Then early in year two, Rickey got a call from Ragin’ Cajuns head coach Bobby Paschal with an offer to join his staff. He accepted.
“I remember asking Rickey, ‘So who is going to coach St. Thomas More?’ and he said, ‘You are.’”
Naturally, the 22-year-old’s stomach got real tight in a hurry, but big brother knew he was doing.
“I had no doubt in my mind that he could do it,” Rickey said. “The only question was, would they give him the job? There was a contingent of people (on the STM board) that wanted to go after a coach from New Orleans. I had to go to the board.
“I told them, ‘Just give him a shot. He knows all the plays and the players like him.’”
Those early nerves elevated to full-blown panic one half into Broussard’s first game as head coach. Trailing Abbeville 23-20 at half, Broussard remembers thinking, ‘This is going to be a short career. They might say, ‘You can’t handle this.’”
So after a halftime speech of yelling out adjustments, star guard Al Fadaol walked by Broussard on the way out of the locker room and says, “Don’t worry coach, I got this for you.”
He was right. Fadaol scored 22 points to complement 21 from John Simpson on the way to a 60-44 win over the Wildcats.
“Fadaol saved my job,” Broussard now laughs.
Fast-forward 41 years and Broussard ranks as the No. 6 coach nationally in wins with 1,162 – that’s 171 wins from being the winningest coach ever. He’s led the Cougars to six state championships, five state runners-up, 20 Top 28 appearances, 27 district championships and 18 30-win seasons.
“It’s a testament to his longevity and consistency and success,” former player Lyle Mouton said of Broussard’s Hall of Fame induction. “The way he tells it, he became a coach by default. I guess sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. He has proven it was a great decision and it wasn’t luck.
“You don’t do it for this long with so much success if it was just luck all the way.”
After winning the district championship that first year as head coach, Broussard still figured the school’s administration would hire a more experienced coach to replace him.
“I’ve been very fortunate. I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Any remaining doubters were proven wrong when Broussard led the Cougars to the state championship in 1986.
“By that year, I had settled into my own,” Broussard said. “I could see the program developing.”
The young coach had begun to mix all of his influences.
He had the basketball knowledge from his brother’s mentor, Rodney Ledoux in Breaux Bridge. He utilized the drill sergeant approach to fundamentals from Rickey and blended that with the more player-friendly demeanor of Frank Hardy, who coached the youngest Broussard his final two seasons at Meaux.
“Rickey sold me on the importance of fundamentals that first year,” Broussard said. “I’d see us play some really athletic teams, but I saw them not being fundamentally sound and making a lot of mistakes. When we wouldn’t make those mistakes at the end of games, I saw that we’d win those games.
“But I also saw that some of the lessons I learned from coach Hardy worked for me too.”
By 1987, the Cougars were ranked No. 21 nationally in the USA Today poll, led by Mouton, the future LSU basketball and baseball player, and future UL Lafayette point guard Eric Mouton.
Despite some immediate success at such an early age, Broussard made another significant decision that greatly influenced his career. He knew deep down he didn’t know everything about being a basketball coach.
As a result, he relentlessly attended clinics and did whatever he could to learn more about his profession.
“I’d like to think that we just outwork people,” Broussard said. “I can name five guys right now that can run circles around me coaching-wise. I’m talking about awesome coaches. Those guys motivated me to work hard and go to clinics and learn as much as I could about this game.”
In fact, years after Broussard had established himself as one of the state’s top coaches, former assistant coach Mike Patin got a call from Broussard to have lunch with him and Roy Petitfils to discuss a matter.
Broussard had gotten multiple technical fouls and even got ejected from a state tournament game and he wanted to investigate that situation.
“He told us, ‘I’ve got to get better at this. I’ve got to get a better handle on this. What can I do?” said Patin, who coached with Broussard from 1988-90. “He was both vulnerable and really sincere. We gave him some practice suggestions. We were very frank with him and he followed back up with us. I was impressed to no end with that.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to throw my passion away, but some of my passion is getting in the way.’”
Indeed, that passion for the game, his team, his school and the relationship with his players is what has helped Broussard overcome all obstacles during his career.
“His drive is otherworldly,” Patin said.
“In the gym, he has the same energy level,” said assistant coach Wesley Cortese, who played for Broussard before being his assistant for 15 years. “He brings energy every day. When I’m having low energy days, he’s like, ‘Hey, let’s go. It’s time to go to work.’ He brings that energy and he expects that energy.”
Broussard’s mind is always moving, very rarely slows down, especially during the basketball season.
“Neither one of us sleep, but we’ll text each other from 5 a.m. until midnight some days,” Cortese said.
Broussard’s passion ranges into other areas as well, though. He’s long been a friend of St. Thomas More’s special needs programs.
“That’s who Danny is,” Patin said. “I remind him of that. Sure, he can chase the wins and all of that is important, but to me, the biggest thing is the stories, the relationships he has with so many people.
“You go to a St. Thomas More basketball game and you’re going to see people who aren’t necessarily basketball fans. They’re Danny fans because of the way he’s treated, inspired and motivated them.”
Still, Broussard’s actual glory years on the floor were yet to come.
Finally in 2013, Trey Touchet sparked a comeback win over the Bryce Washington-led St. Augustine Purple Knights and that second state title has been followed by four more since then.
For anyone doubting Broussard’s longevity, many believe this past season might have been the best coaching job of his career. With his leading scorer at 10 points a game, Broussard gave the 2024-25 Cougars a challenge at the beginning of the season.
“I told the kids that we had to guard better than any team in the history of St. Thomas More and that’s what they did,” Broussard said. “What a perfect example of buying into what the team needs.”
No one who knows Broussard expects him to slow down any time soon.
One year after being briefly benched by triple bypass surgery, Broussard guided his 2025 Cougars to the state championship game and then led the Cougars’ coaching staff to a victory coaching the West All-Stars in the McDonald’s All-American game in New York.
“This is one great year for Danny Broussard,” Lyle Mouton laughed.
Kevin Foote, a lifelong Lafayette resident, has been a multi-media sports journalist for nearly as long as Danny Broussard has coached at STM. He hosts a daily sports talk radio show and writes for the Acadiana Advocate. He and Broussard have done colorful Facebook Live commentary on playoff games involving their beloved New Orleans Saints and Houston Astros.
–LaSportsHall.com–
