By KEVIN FOOTE, 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, when St. Thomas More 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 three-day Class of 2025 Induction Celebration begins Thursday 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 the new Lafayette 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.’”
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.”
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.”
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.
Broussard’s actual glory years on the floor were yet to come.
Finally in 2013 came that second state title, followed by four more since then.
Many believe this past season might have been the best coaching job of his career.
One year after being briefly benched by triple bypass surgery, Broussard guided his 2025 Cougars to the state championship game and then led the STM 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.
Contact Kevin at kfoote@theadvocate.com