re: Do You Think Alleva Is Letting JJ Play the Season Out to Bury Brown/Temple?

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Jones has definitely underachieved, but he hasn't been horrible until this season.

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What kind of person doesn't think last year was horrible? No post season but had #1 pick in the draft. A quarter of the high school coaches in any state in the South could have accomplished more than JJ did.

the striking thing about the relationship between Jones and Brown and Brown's influence on Jones and his hiring is, you never see the tough defense, the exuberance, the team play from Jones' squads, or even the coaching acumen that Brown had, which many say was deficient

but also there is simply very little front-court talent

Tony Bennett at Virginia makes $2.2 million a year and has a seven year contract that rolls over. He has a $1.4 million buyout.

To get TB to even consider coming to BR we'd hafta give him a 7-year contract at $2.75 million with no buyout.

I seriously doubt LSU is willing to pay anywhere near $2.75 mil for a MBB HC especially since we are paying Les NOT to coach and would be paying JJ NOT to coach.

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LSU saves $800000 by firing him at the end of the year.

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According to the thread on this earlier, this is not true. He gets paid for this season whether he finishes it or not, and $800,000 for the remaining two seasons on his contract. LSU will pay him exactly the same amount if he's fired today or at the end of the season.

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No reason to do it now. Let the disgrace brought to us by Dale and his boys be on full display for all to witness. They won't be able to say shite when this team closes out the season like they will.

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Contrary to the thoughts of some who have never been an administrator over a large program, I seriously doubt this guy is the total idiot some make him out to be. He is maneuvering some political obstacles and really needs to neuter the influence of Dale Brown and Collis Temple. Letting Jones go down in flames will be the "you had your chance and fricked up as I told you that you would, and now I will do this without your precious input."

There's nothing to be gained by firing JJ before the end of the season. Things are already in dumpster fire mode, so it's just better to let it burn through the end of the season - if for nothing else to communicate to Brown and Temple that they should enjoy retirement and keep their noses out of the LSU Men's BB program. The hiring was purely political and had nothing to do with JJ's achievements as a coach. He needs to go to a D-3 school, which is probably more suited to his "talents".

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I think it's a known fact that Alleva got bullied into the hire

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Based on what? It's not like the fanbase was overwhelmingly in favor of hiring JJ. It's not like F. King has some special ties to Dale Brown and the Temples. This was exactly the same kind of lazy, uninspired hire as Ed Orgeron. Who is bullying poor Joe into all of these pathetic hires?

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I think it's a known fact that Alleva got bullied into the hire

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there were rumors among the TAF that Temple had threatened to blackball LSU BB regarding AAU players

Why don't you guys realize there is no benefit to firing Jones mid-season. The difference between basketball and football is that we had a great deal of talent on football and had enough games remaining that we could still compete for the Nationa Championship. As it turned out we lost two games that prevented this but if we had won them we would have been in the top 4.

Basketball has marginal talent; and the chance of another coach making a huge difference was slim. We weren't making the tournament with this bunch no matter what. Also Aleva can be making a search for a new coach whether CJJ is fired or not. No decent coach is going to take the job midseason if they already have a job.

So Aleva should have a list of at least six to ten guys ready to interview by the end of the season. Recruiting will suffer but it was already suffering with Johnny. Instead of bringing in some badly needed big men, he only has two guard/sf wing types coming in.

So no advantage to firing before the season is over and Aleva can save a few bucks on the buyout and avoid a ton of bad national publicity. Let it play out and then get us the best coach you can.