If you recall, Johnson unexpectedly left LSU pretty late in the "off season." After the Final Four. So LSU kind of got a bit of a late start on the coaching carousel. That doesn't mean they couldn't have hired a guy with better credentials than Jones, but there was obviously a large faction of Dale Brown folks pushing for him. In fact, I went to the Final Four practice on Friday when Brown let Jones coach in the College All-Star game (Whimp Sanderson was the other team's coach). Jones was hired as LSU's new coach 2 weeks later.

I genuinely believe Alleva tried to go get a "big name" guy from a power conf. The problem was that it was getting close to the April signing period and I doubt a lot of the big name guys wanted to leave that late. Once it was established that he wasn't going to get one of those guys he had to go to plan B. There would have been a full-scale mutiny of the former basketball players/booster/coaches etc. if Jones was passed over for another mid-major HC or assistant with no HC experience. At the end of the day, I think Alleva just acquiesced. Jones was always the "fall back". Otherwise there would have never been a need for a coaching search.

Below is a list of the 2012 hires.

LINK

The only ones that have done some really big things since that time are Larry Brown (also has his program on probation); Jerod Haase (starting to get things rolling at UAB) and Kevin Ollie (won national championship the next year)

Also, the "hot names" from the NCAA tournament that season haven't done much. John Groce is about to get fired at Illinois, and the Lehigh and Norfolk St. coaches who everyone on here loved, haven't done anything of note since that tournament.

For the record, I don't think Jones is getting fired after this season. However, the guy I would look at is Jerod Haase at UAB. He is starting to really build that program and has a big time pedigree - played and coached under Roy Williams at KU and followed him to UNC. Opinions vary on Williams, but he has won for a very long time in college basketball.