Basketball (Men's) question- what should we expect?

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with a Final Four type team once or twice a decade.

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That's just not reality and has never been in the history of LSU basketball. Certainly not going to be reality now when the cost to compete is so high.

That’s about right. I think you need to be qualifying for the tourney every year. If you do that your good teams will likely make runs and elevate the program so I get what you’re saying about final 4 appearances but that’s not really a standard goal.

LSU basketball got caught with its pants down to start the NIL era and combine that with the current staff and you have what we have now

Keep gaslighting real fans to prop up your lame duck coach you only pretend to like because he isn’t the previous guy you fricking pill.

Under the current HC? You should expect very little. But that doesn't mean the program can't be great under the right HC

The right HC changes everything. Success, support, investment, interest, etc ALL flows from having the right guy at the top. If you don't have him you have no shot. And simply throwing money at a below average HC isn't going to change much. At best it takes you from bad to (maybe) average. There is ZERO reason LSU couldn't have the same type of success Alabama, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee have had in recent year. It' just takes finding right guy to lead it. LSU was a historically better program than Florida..until Florida hired Donvan...then found it again with Golden. Likewise, LSU was better, or at least equal to the likes of Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee...until those programs nailed their coaching hires.

Obviously hiring the right guy is much easier said than done. But that doesn't mean you (a) stop trying and (b) just accept mediocrity. Alabama is a great example. In 2015 they hired Avery Johnson. On paper it looked like a great hire. 7 year NBA HC who led a team to the NBA Finals. He had signficant coaching experience. He signed big time recruits (and yes, AL was paying players...just like everyone else). Yet, the results were average....at best. Then they hire Buffalo's HC. A guy who just 6 years prior was a HS coach. Suddenly, a program who, in the 21st century, had won just one SEC championship and had just one run to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament was now a powerhouse...making deep tournament runs, winning SEC championships, and annually sitting among the 25 best teams in the country. That's not because Alabama decided to "care" about basketball more. Hell, they hired a mid-major HC on the heels of hiring an NBA HC. It's that they nailed the hire...the success, interest, resources, etc all flowed from it.

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Under the current HC? You should expect very little. But that doesn't mean the program can't be great under the right HC

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Yeah, I thought I made that clear with the OP...

this isn't about McMahon as such. This is about LSU basketball, and where we should expect it to be in a given year.

Just like with football- we expect it to be bowl-eligible, pushing 10 wins. Or baseball, we expect to win and host a regional.

I think men's basketball should be in the 20 win range, looking at being in the tourney, to where we get excited when they announce the field, basically every year. Maybe a down year where we slip to the NIT, but also balanced by occasional years where we're expecting to make a deep run.

Double bye in SEC tournament most years with rare exceptions for down years. NCAA tournament every year with rare exceptions for down years.

That’s a slightly lower standard Will Wade team’s produced. He demonstrated this is possible within last decade.

I compare LSU's hiring of Will Wade to that of Matt McMahon. I've said it before ... LSU realized what it had when it hired Will Wade, and it moved his introductory news conference to the atrium of the LSU Union, complete with cheerleaders (and maybe some band members). I took my lunch break to attend, and I left sensing LSU might be on to something great (or at least better than Trent Johnson and Johnny Jones) with him.

Fast forward to the hiring of Matt McMahon. His news conference was held in the usual spot in the athletics building. No cheerleaders. No band members. He didn't wow me. I thought he was a solid hire on paper, having won more than 30 games and beaten Todd Golden and San Francisco in the NCAA tournament.

Point is, LSU needs to nail its men's basketball hire so that, "the success, interest, resources, etc all flow from it." Especially if the new arena opens during this coach's tenure.

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Will Wade, 1 NIT, 3 NCAA in 5 yrs, would have made NCAA the other year except for Covid cancelling life.

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When you look at this, this is probably what our Program is capable of.

NIT
3 Seed (sweet 16)
9 Seed
8 Seed (round 32)
6 seed

So,
80% of the time we make the tournament
40% of the time we have a 6 seed or better.


This isn't even that hard to do if you are a serious program and you hire a decent coach

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Just like with football- we expect it to be bowl-eligible, pushing 10 wins. Or baseball, we expect to win and host a regional.

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Expectations change. ~30 years ago no one was expecting LSU to be a perennial 10-win team (or 9 given the season was only 11 games).

I think right now it's reasonable to expect LSU to be a consistent NCAA Tournament team. Particularly with it seemingly becoming commonplace over 1/2 of the league's teams are getting in. But if you get the right coach like LSU did with Saban in football or Bertman in baseball those expectations change with success.

Arguably no other sport has been impacted more by the transfer rules than basketball. Mostly because of the small size of the roster relative to other sports. That means success and expectations can change very quickly. Get a new HC, get a new roster, look at the schedule, look at the competition in your league....then set the expectations for that season.