Morning briefing

The woman at Starbucks was fast and efficient, and responded with charm and humor when a clumsy customer knocked over a stack of fiber sleeves designed for hot coffee cups, sending them scattering on the counter.

Quick thinking. Problem solving. Crisis management.

All those job skills in action inspired this thought: Maybe that wide-ranging search for the new Louisiana State athletic director simply wasn’t broad enough.

Don’t ask his former coach

After all, the original list of early applications -- listed by a couple of newspapers -- included a mortgage loan officer in Georgia, a 2006 homecoming king from Southern Illinois University, an assistant high school track coach from Minnesota and a former Burlington Coat Factory salesman.

Although there’s plenty to recommend about Burlington coats -- really nice leather jackets, in fact -- there’s more to the story about the coat salesman. His name is Kevin Millen, a former Georgetown basketball player with some experience with the legal system.

Not quite an asset here. It was pointed out by LSU’s student newspaper, the Daily Reveille, that Millen pleaded guilty in 1999 to stalking former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson.

Guess Thompson wasn’t down on that list of references.

Trivia time

The West Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament begins Thursday at San Diego. What is the only school other than Gonzaga to win the men’s tournament since 1999?

Will’s ABA affair

Actor Will Ferrell’s new comedy “Semi-Pro” sounds like a fanciful step back in time to the 1970s, having fun with the American Basketball Assn. before hoops became so serious and corporate.

“I love the story of the ABA that a lot of people don’t know, which was this alternate universe to the NBA, and had all these insane characters,” Ferrell told ABC News.

And insane, in the nicest way possible, might be the way to describe some of the music of that era. On the movie soundtrack are such gems as War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” and the Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster.”

Sounds a lot more about relationships than sports.

But you have to feel sad when titans such as Leif Garrett, Captain & Tennille and Meat Loaf fail to make the soundtrack cut.

Come to think of it, Meat Loaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” might have fit in nicely in a basketball movie.

Course correction

So much for a home-bunker advantage.

Golfer Greg Norman, decidedly under the weather, had to take three to get out of a bunker at the recent PGA tournament in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, and afterward told reporters: “I think I’m a better bunker player than that.”

One hitch: He designed the course himself.

It is charmingly called El Camaleon. No chameleon jokes about Norman allowed.

Trivia answer

San Diego, in 2003.

And finally

Celtic soccer Manager Gordon Strachan, on the long odds of beating host Barcelona next week: “I wouldn’t put my house on it. I’ve worked too hard over 35 years to get a house.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com