Seth Davis nails it, and he could probably care less about LSU hoops

Will this year be the final year of the Trent Johnson era at LSU? As a LSU fan out here in the northwest, when they hired him my thinking was it would be a good fit, but it doesn't seem to be working.
-- John Hayes, Spokane, WA

I don't do a lot of coach-on-the-hot-seat speculating because it is often baseless, and I'm sensitive to the fact that these are real people whose livelihoods are at stake. But while I hope that Johnson can hang on because I think he is a good coach and a good guy, there is no doubt that his job security is tenuous.

John used the exact right word in his e-mail: fit. Whether a certain coach can succeed in a specific situation depends mostly on how well he fits there. Trent Johnson was born in Berkeley, went to high school in Seattle, played college ball at Boise State and was the head coach at Nevada and Stanford before coming to LSU. He had no ties to the southeast. Not only that, he had just taken Stanford to the Sweet 16. The main reason Johnson bolted for LSU is that the original athletic director who hired him was replaced in 2006 by Bob Bowlsby, and he and Johnson and Bowlsby did not get along. That may have been a good reason to leave Stanford, but it wasn't a good reason to come to LSU.

It also didn't help that Johnson was replacing John Brady, who had taken LSU to the Final Four in 2006. (It shows how badly Brady treated people that despite that incredible accomplishment, LSU fired him just two years later.) If LSU had been simply bad under Johnson that would be troubling enough, but the Tigers have gone 5-27 in the SEC the last two years, and they have already lost this season to Coastal Carolina, Northwestern and South Alabama.

The bottom line is, Johnson has not recruited well enough. Is that because he refuses to cheat? Perhaps. But the bottom line is, a coach is hired to deliver results. I'm hoping like heck that Johnson turns this thing around, but right now there's not much indication that's about to happen.