Pioneering coach Gunter dies

BATON ROUGE, La. – Sue Gunter, a Hall of Fame coach and pioneer in women’s college basketball, died Thursday. She was 66.

LSU said Gunter, who had suffered from emphysema, died at her home in Baton Rouge.

She coached for 40 years, 22 at LSU where she took teams to 13 NCAA tournaments and laid the foundation for trips to the NCAA Final Four the past two years. She will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame posthumously on Sept. 9.

“I learned so much from Sue about the X’s and O’s of the game of basketball,” said Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in women’s college basketball.

Summitt played on the 1976 U.S. Olympic Team on which Gunter served as an assistant, and she was an assistant to Gunter on the 1980 U.S. team.