re: LSU admin is proving they don’t care about men’s bball & I’m not even talking about Ws&Ls

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I struggle with how fast a basketball team should be able to level up at the college level,

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Iowa St, Kansas St and Missouri all had 1st year HCs come in an immediately turn a losing program into an NCAAT team in ONE season though good use of the transfer market. Now, those are somewhat outliers. But they are also proof it can be done quickly.

No one. I repeat, NO ONE, expected McMahon to come in last season and compete for an SEC championship. Absolute best case scenario expectation was that he could do enough to have LSU in the conversation for an NCAAT bid. But again, that wasn't the expectation. However, what he did was field the worst team in the SEC and tie the record for the worst conf. record in LSU basketball history. At one point last season LSU lost 14 straight games. 11 by 10+ points. So not only was LSU losing, they weren't even competitive. This season looks to be no different. A team with 8 new players. They've played 3 power conf. opponents. They beat Wake Forest in OT and lost by 23 and 15 to the other two opponents. One of those games at home.

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As for the NCAA and their handling of Jalen Cook? It feels like they're still giving us a hard time, so it seems like we're still dealing with some unspoken sanctions.

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Brandon Murray (remember him from LSU) hasn't played a game yet at Ole Miss because he hasn't been ruled eligible following his second transfer from Georgetown. The NCAA doesn't purposely have it out to screw LSU. They told EVERYONE in college basketball, in JANUARY, the waivers for 2x transfers were going to be very limited. They reiterated it again in March, well before Cook transferred to LSU. McMahon (and many other coaches around the country) called the NCAA's bluff and have come up empty.

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Remember, it took McMahon three years at Murray State to hit his stride.

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That's not a glowing endorsement of McMahon...at all! In fact, just the opposite. The Murray St program had a LONG history of success spanning decades and different HCs prior to McMahon getting the HC job. He inherited a program whose fewest conference wins in any season was 10 over the span of 12 years! He immediately won 10 and 8 conference games in his first two seasons as HC. Both longtime LOWS for the program. In his second season he had the only losing season Murray St. had posted since the mid-80's. I think MANY uninformed people who enter these discussions think he "built" Murray St. NOTHING could be further from the truth. Murray St had been one of the best one-bid league programs for decades prior to McMahon.

To his credit, he got MSU back on track after that (except for a .500 season in the strange 20-21 season). But is that the mindset? It's ok if the LSU program crashes and burns in the first 2 seasons because year 3 is going to be great? That may have worked at MSU because the program itself had long been the standard bearer of the OVC. But LSU is not that of the SEC, so it's hard to imagine things suddenly turnaround. Particularly with LSU becoming a less, and less desirable destination for great players with every mounting loss.

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Scotty's probably thinking that this is all he's willing to go with for now, and as long as football and baseball are on track then he's not sticking his neck out.

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Why? There is no other sport on campus that loses more money than Women's Basketball. Yet, he "stuck out his neck" to pay a huge salary for a great HC. That paid huge dividends on the in just two years. But even though Mulkey has made LSU one of the top programs in all of WBB the program is still going to operate at a financial loss because that is just the marketplace of WBB. He's also paying a ton of money (relative to the college baseball market) to Jay Johnson. Now, Johnson has absolutely produced results. But even though LSU is now the best college baseball program in the US once again, it is still only going to generate a meager profit. That's not a knock on Johnson. Just the nature of CBB market.

MBB can, and should, be the second most profitable sport on campus because the MBB marketplace as a whole is one of two college sports with the market to generate significant profits (obviously football is #1). So why would an AD NOT want to make a significant investment into a potentially high revenue generating sport? A successful mens basketball team helps EVERY sport at LSU. Every ADs wet dream should be to have a highly successful and profitable football and men's basketball program. That's how the department as a whole makes its money.