Before anyone reads this (or doesn't), I would like to tell you, it will be long, and it will be quite positive...so people off the pain train, stop reading now. With that said...here we go:

I'm making this thread because of the seemingly overwhelming disdain most have for this man. People talk about his lack of passion, leadership, ability to coach, etc etc.

Well, many of you have not cared or do not care about basketball...until this year. I've seen SO MANY posts talking about "I never get excited for basketball, but I did this year and they let me down." Do you know why you were excited? Because of Benny. His godfather is here...who exactly hired his godfather? It's easy to say why Simmons is here, yet, nobody has given Jones any praises of the fact that he had the foresight to hire DP in the first place. But let's take Simmons and Blakeney out of the question. He has still brought in loads of talent that have made us a competitive force to be reckon with in the SEC. Each year he gets a transfer from a different school, or brings in a nice mixture of talent and program guys. It's because he has a passion and caring for the players. He doesn't jump up and down and look like he's constipated so he "doesn't care". The guy is constantly talking and working officials, trying to sway calls, showing emotion...most just watch it on TV so say that for no damn reason and it's getting old.

While staying on tourney appearances, we still have a great chance to go again this year. Since 1992, we have only been to back-to-back NCAA tournies once...that was in '05-'06. So there is a strong possibility that CJJ will have inherited a very average team, and each year improved upon that team. We can sit here and say "Yea, but that's because Ben is here." Or "Yea, he had Mickey and Martin."...great, he's the coach and got those guys.

Everybody has flaws. The Coach K, Tom Izzo, Self, Donovan, etc's of the world are few and far between. Many coaches can coach, but suck at connecting with players. Some are great at recruiting but suck with X's and O's. Jones is not without his downfalls. Our lack of rebounding and continuous defensive mishaps are frustrating to say the least. But scoring fast, playing uptempo...that's a philosophy and a style of play. It's literally no different than holding the ball, running methodical stuff, then trying to score with 5 on the shot clock and play tough D. It is all about preference as a coach.

Building on that, I'm so tired of the complaints about what this team does or does not do, specifically CJJ. For instance, we have shot too many 3's. Well, we have shooters, that's what they do. We try to score quickly and keep the pressure on the other team. Many, many shots have been very good and wide open shots. I can think of 3 specifically last night that were WIDE open, but if the other team simply won't guard you, you gotta take the shot. The problem at Charleston is that we weren't aggressive. So what did Johnny Jones do? He put Ben in the post, ran the offense through him, and we only shot 12 3-pointers. Does Jones get no credit for that? Or how about when Beech was hitting 3's from the U and they were up 15...and we came out in the 2nd half and immediately changed the entire way we played defense and destroyed their lead and forced them to call a timeout. Does Jones get credit for any adjustments he makes ever, or just when he doesn't make an adjustment we crucify him?

TL;DR Crowd (and overall summary): Do not give up hope on this team. We made a critical offensive adjustments last night, followed by an in-game defensive adjustment that caused us to outscore them by nearly 20 in the 2nd half. We have struggled in the early going, but we are a 3-pointer and a free throw away from being 6-1. Many negative people will just point out how we don't do this or that so we suck. Well, it's a real thing that we have 3 true Freshman playing significant minutes. In basketball, players have specific roles and they're trying to figure those roles out. Oh, and our team leader/best shooter is out along with our best low post player (outside of the Chosen One). They have taken early lumps, but adversity is a very good thing in the long run. We still have some difficult games, but I predict at some point this team will go on a 5-6 game stretch in the SEC where they're unstoppable.

I worked for Brady, was there for Trent, have maybe missed single digit home games since '02. Give me an 81-80 game over a 60-59 game any day of the damn week. Thank you Johnny for making LSU basketball relevant again

This post was edited on 12/3/15 at 2:43 pm