re: To all the Johnny Jones haters..

To me the best proof of what CJJ means to this school's basketball program is this post. I am a die hard basketball fan. I followed the team during all of the Trent Johnson years and lived and mostly died with the team.

There were maybe 10 of us doing that. Any basketball post but especially one in the off season would be ridiculed and hooted off the board. Now there is a post with 100 remarks in the off season right after the spring football game.

That marks a huge increase in fan attention and participation. CJJ has brought this program back from nothing to the NCAA tournament in 3 years. Now going into his 4th year he will have the number one recruiting class in the country (have we ever had another one?).

And some of you say he isn't good enough? Not an X and O's coach. Everytime I read that remark I think football fan. Basketball is not an X and O's game like that. There is no magic configuration of players that guarantees a bucket or a defensive stop every time.

Basketball is either chaos, diving for loose balls, fighting for rebounds, slapping the ball away for a block or steal or it is patience, moving the ball around until you get the right shot, or playing team defense and not bailing them out with a last minute foul.

There are only so many ways of positioning players on a basketball court and all modern coaches know what they are. But whether you run a pick play for a guard, a backdoor cut for an alley oop dunk, or an isolation play and let your star go one on one, you have to have players that can execute.

It is mostly the individual athleticism and skills that your players possess that make it work or not. Can a great basketball coach win with bad players? I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong. I question a lot of CJJ's decisions as far as who is getting playing time, resting your starters more, critical time outs and coming out of a time out seemingly confused as to what the play is.

That's what fans do. We get to second guess everything. But to say that this basketball program has not done well and gotten better is just a bunch of the proverbial cow puck.

This team has gotten better from year to year. To just look at Won/Lost numbers without taking into account the level of competition does nothing. The SEC as a whole has gotten stronger during these three years also.

As for him not screaming and yelling at players and refs during the games. I am thankful for that. I hate coaches like that. If Frank Martin of SC was our coach I would not be the fan I am.

So lighten up. CJJ may never win a national championship but if he gives us entertaining, competitive basketball with talented players to watch, I for one will be happy.