re: Easier program turnaround, LSU or NcNeese St.

He might

The only reason of course that any comparison of basketball programs is made or for that matter that Mcneese gets mentioned here is that they obviously have Wade as a coach. They have also found some success in beating Michigan. But there is no comparison between the two teams. While Mcneese beat a not so good Michigan team, they also lost to La tech and should have lost this week to Texas A&M Corpus Christi. While LSU lost to Nichols earlier in the year one of their starting players could not play. McMahon has done tremendous job bring the program back from where Wade left it. But to answer your question it is easier to have a competitive team at Mcneese with less talent because of their schedule but much harder to recruit LSU type talent. I think most would say that Mcneese is having a great year but would not likely beat LSU at its weakest point in a rebuilding year.

We’re so poorly coached man. From bow to stern it’s just sub par for this level. We don’t rebound even though we’re a big team. We don’t take care of the ball even though we have a bunch of capable ball handlers and most of them are 3/4 year players. We’re totally lost in secondary situations on offense. If the initial screen roll action doesn’t produce a good look we’re completely stuck. We have no situational awareness, always taking bad shots at the worst times, sometimes by the wrong player. We don’t do any of the little or smart things that win games well. It’s just disheartening for this group of kids.

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McMahon seems to be a good coach,

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Not trying to be argumentative, but based upon what exactly?

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LSU is still a work in progress under McMahon. I worry that McMahon's career at LSU will look more like Trent or Johnny than Will. At this point, I will be happy if McMahon can come close to Brady's results.

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Obviously there is still more than half of the SEC schedule to play. So it is unreasonable to draw any definitive conclusions right now. But if at the end of the year the mindset is still "I will be happy if McMahon can come close to Brady's results", then why continue to waste time pushing for such a relatively low bar?

The goal of EVERY major program should be to compete for an hopefully win national championships. Now, I'm not saying that should be the EXPECTATION every year. But it should be the benchmark upon which a coach is judged. In other words, "is the program showing signs of truly progressing towards that ultimate goal?" And if not, why continue to waste time knowing you are VERY unlikely to ever reach that goal?

Making a bad hire is not necessarily the worst sin an AD can make. It's really hard to definitively project how successful a coach will be. Especially when you are hiring a mid-major coach who has never coached at the major conf. level. The greater sin is unnecessarily keeping a guy too long once it becomes clear he's highly unlikely to ever have great success.

I'm NOT saying McMahon should be fired at the end of the season. There is still too much season left to be played to reach any conclusions. But Woodward would be neglectful if he's not constantly evaluating the state of each program and where it might be heading in terms of success.

He didn't hesitate to can Orgeron once it became clear he was tanking the program. And that was 1.5 seasons after one of the greatest seasons in CFB history! It took one year for him to recognize the WBB program was going nowhere, fast. So he made a change. Same for Paul Mainieri. Mainieri really never had a full season under Woodward before he decided to "retire" in 2021. There is debate if Mainieri actually wanted to retire or if he was somewhat "encouraged" to. (Particularly in light of the fact he purportedly interviewed for the open Miami job this past offseason). Even this year in football with the complete disaster on defense in just the staff's second year. There wasn't a mindset of "let's give it another year and see if things improve". It was a complete replacement.

MBB gets a little longer rope because the expectation level is lower than that of football and baseball. But at some point I would think an AD has to look at the program and evaluate "Is this program going anywhere noteworthy?" IF, that answer at the end of the season is "Not likely" then there should at lest be some evaluation of the marketplace for a potential replacement (even if the AD doesn't actually replace the HC)