After the Brown years and the Brady resurgence, did LSU basketball become unprioritized?

Men’s BBall is too high on your list. Gymnastics, Softball and golf are probably higher priorities.

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Men’s BBall is too high on your list. Gymnastics, Softball and golf are probably higher priorities.

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But if you remember Brady was an abrasive jerk back then. He won so people supported the program. This is not like football, there are alot of quality basketball coaches out there so how do we arrive at hires like MM? Who are the basketball people in the Admin that can identify a coach and pair it with a plan for what we should be? There are none, that’s the real issue.

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Football has always been number one. But for a very long time basketball was a priority behind football especially prior to the '90s. Then baseball became priority behind football as basketball become more and more unprioritized.

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I wouldnt say un-prioritized but Skip pulled a lot of fan attention away from basketball.

I’ll continue to beat this dead horse as long as I have to but the model for LSU basketball is Houston. Not overloaded with high ranked talent but always athletic, defend like crazy and bang the boards like animals. You can recruit that makeup every year in Louisiana. Hell Houston and Baylor built their programs off Louisiana kids.

The LSU basketball head coaching position has always required some personality and salesmanship to consistently win. I can't believe people are acting like we just don't have the resources to compete with the likes of Mississippi State and Ole Miss in basketball. There will be a new facility in a few years and everything will be in place but even right now we can win with the right guy in charge.

If LSU wants to be a winning program, there's a guy 2 hours away that took a dead program and turned them into the best team in their league in about 10 minutes. There are plenty of coaches that could probably do the same, but the guy down the road would win here right away, he's already done it. It's up to LSU to give their fans a winner. The current head coach isn't working and there's zero evidence to suggest it's going to get better.

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If LSU wants to be a winning program, there's a guy 2 hours away that took a dead program and turned them into the best team in their league in about 10 minutes.

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That hire would instantly and massively increase basketball ticket sales.

I'm surprised Woody can't recognize that. My only conclusion is basketball is not a priority by LSU athletic administration.

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I wouldnt say un-prioritized but Skip pulled a lot of fan attention away from basketball.

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This is the correct answer. LSU didn't necessarily move away from basketball, Skip just MADE baseball bigger.

LSU basketball has shown time and time again, that when there is a winner, they will get the support.

I think you are kind of confusing "priority" with "popularity", along with the laziness of Joe Alleva. I don't think LSU basketball became less of a "priority". It just became less popular because of 30 years of wildly inconsistent results.

At the time he was hired, Trent Johnson wasn't perceived as a "bad" hire. He was coming off a season at Stanford where he took them to the Sweet 16. This was after a successful multi year stint at Nevada where he took that program from a losing program to one of the better mid-major programs in the country (he took them to the Sweet 16 before being hired by Stanford). He immediately took a team that finished last in the SEC the year before and won the conference by three games in his first year. It was after that when the wheels fell off. But that's not because basketball wasn't a "priority". It was that Johnson was a bad fit in terms of recruiting this region. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Then the laziness of Alleva took over. Just like he did with O, he took the path of least resistance and hired a HC (Jones) who would not have been a candidate for ANY OTHER major conf. school except LSU due to school/state ties. I guess you could argue that shows a lack of priority. But really, that lack of priority permeated all sports under Alleva. It wasn't just limited to basketball.

Alleva would have again taken the path of least resistance if his assistant AD, Eddie Nunez, who played at Florida under a (then) very young Billy Donovan didn't push for Wade.

The Wade firing was unique in that it was the first time in at least 40+ years, maybe more, where a popular HC was dismissed for reasons other than a lack of on-court performance. Those circumstances put LSU in a spot where they didn't have a ton of leverage in hiring a new HC. Still, if you go back and look at the 6 SEC coaches hired in that cycle it's hard to argue at the time McMahon didn't have the best resume of the group outside of Mike White...who had just been pushed out for failing to meet expectations at Florida.

Women's basketball is the single biggest money LOSER in the athletic department. Even under Mulkey. But I don't think LSU "prioritizes" it more than MBB. It's just that an opportunity presented itself for WBB that isn't available to MBB. That is a HOF coach from Louisiana, and who had a child attend/play sports at LSU, who had a chance to come home. Unfortunately, no such person exist in MBB.

McMahon was always going to get more than just a year or two at LSU. Unfortunately, with every passing defeat it seems less and less likely he can be the guy to make LSU competitive on a consistent basis. But I don't think the attitude of the AD is "oh well. Who gives a shite? Let's just see if Johnny Jones wants to come back." I think LSU wants to win big just like Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, etc. It's just a matter of finding the right guy. Mid-major hires are always a crap-shoot, for every team, and LSU doesn't have the presence in the college basketball marketplace to hire away a Dan Hurley, Mark Few, even Scott Drew, from situations where they are winning at very high levels and are already handsomely paid. They don't need LSU.

Often great coaches come in two forms: (1) you strike gold with a mid-major hire (Oats, Hurley, etc) or (2) you catch a fallen star (Pearl, Sampson, Barnes). The first is a crapshoot and the second is not always an option.