Colonels shuffle athletic positions
July 20, 2016
2 injured in Broadmoor fire
July 24, 2016
Former Nicholls State University men’s basketball coach J.P. Piper is heading back to the high school ranks.
While there, he will be coaching one of the teams expected to be near the top of the District 7-4A standings.
Multiple sources told The Times on Thursday night that Piper was nearing an agreement to be the boys’ basketball coach at Morgan City – a school that competes in District 7-4A against local programs South Lafourche, South Terrebonne, Vandebilt Catholic and Ellender.
Piper confirmed the news in a Facebook message Friday morning, stating that he will be the Tigers coach next season.
Morgan City finished last season 12-18 under coach Robert Lee. But those numbers are a bit misleading.
The Tigers won more games than they lost on the court last season, but were bombarded in the middle of district play by a Louisiana High School Athletic Association investigation which discovered that the team was playing several ineligible players.
The investigation forced the Tigers to forfeit several district wins, which cost the team a spot at the playoffs.
“Piper will be here next year,” a source in the Morgan City athletic department said in a text message. “People are excited about it. We’re all thinking it’s going to be a wonderful fit.”
In Piper, District 7-4A will be gaining a high profile coach – one who has tons of experience at both the prep and college levels.
At Nicholls, Piper coached 12 seasons, generating a 132-224 record overall.
Piper helped turned Nicholls from a six-win program in 2004-05 to a 20-win team in 2008-09 – his most successful season with the team.
The Colonels were also .500 in 2010-11, posting a 14-14 campaign.
In conference play, the Colonels were more competitive under the new Morgan City coach, posting an 82-118 mark. That included spots in the Southland Conference Tournament in each of the past several seasons.
In Piper’s final season, Nicholls went 11-23 with a 6-12 mark in league play. The Colonels won a Southland Conference Tournament game, but it wasn’t enough to save the coach. Nicholls announced in late-March that it would not renew his expired contract.
Before coaching the Colonels, Piper was a title-winning coach at the high school level.
He started his prep career at East Ascension High School where he served as an assistant coach with the team from 1992-1994. He then became a head coach at Dunham School, where he worked from 1994-2002 until he left to become an assistant coach at Nicholls, the program he took over two years later.
With Dunham, Piper coached the school to the highest level of play in Louisiana. In 1997-98, the Tigers won the Class 1A State Championship. A year later, they returned to the LHSAA Top 28 Tournament and were the state runner-up.
A year later in 1999, Piper was named the Class 1A State Coach of the Year, one of many accolades he earned at the prep level.
Off the floor at Dunham, he served as the school’s principal for three years and was also a two-year President of the Louisiana High School Basketball Coach’s Association.
With Morgan City, Piper will be taking over a team that is among the best on paper throughout the area.
The Tigers had four seniors on last year’s team, but they return arguably the district’s best player, Makye Richard – a 6-foot, 1-inch combo guard who can score from all reaches of the floor.
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