Going into Tuesday night's SEC basketball action, there were a ton of questions about seeding in the SEC Tournament.
Florida, Kentucky and South Carolina entered Tuesday tied for first at 10-2; Arkansas and Alabama were tied for fourth; Ole Miss and Tennessee shared sixth; five stood at 5-7 and were tied for eighth; and there was Missouri (2-10) escaping the cellar because LSU was all alone at the bottom with a 1-11 record.
LSU's lone conference victory was Jan. 4 over Missouri, and there won't be a regular-season rematch.
The good news in Baton Rouge is there are no remaining games against the three teams tied for first.
The bad news is that the Tigers, who played at Ole Miss on Tuesday night, are still the Tigers. Neither Pete Maravich nor Shaquille O'Neal is walking through the door, at least not to play basketball. O'Neal was in Baton Rouge on Saturday for a reunion of an SEC championship team, and the Arkansas Razorbacks beat LSU 78-70, outscoring the home team 47-30 in the second half.
Dale Brown coached that championship team, and the Tigers have had only three conference titles since O'Neal played.
Two were under John Brady, and the last one was in 2009 under Trent Johnson.
Brady and Johnson aren't walking through the door, either.
Presumably Johnny Jones, by all accounts a really nice guy, will be walking out soon.
When Brady replaced Brown as head coach in 1997, LSU was in the NCAA doghouse. The first two seasons were tougher than field corn. Throw out those years, and Brady was 171-106, making the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 2000 and the Final Four in 2006.
Less than two years later, before the season ended, Brady was fired.
In came Johnson, a mistake from the get-go, although he did take the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament in his first season with Brady's players. Three years later, he resigned to take the head coaching job at TCU. That is not even a lateral move.
Johnson, who grew up in the West and lived most of his life there, was fired after four years at TCU.
Basketball coaches were not lining up to replace Johnson at LSU. The university's idea of improving basketball seems to be expanding the football stadium. The Tigers' arena, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, was once known as the "Deaf Dome." Today, it is more like a bomb shelter.
It won't be an easy call to fire Jones, a native of Louisiana who played for LSU and served 12 years as an assistant there and 11 years as a head coach at North Texas.
Last season, there were great expectations for the Tigers because they had the No. 1 recruit in the nation, Ben Simmons, who last summer was the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. LSU went 19-14 and 11-7 in the SEC, and it was not invited to the NCAA Tournament.
Concern started to set in, and now the Tigers are in last place in the SEC. Their March Madness will be spring break.
Jones, if terminated, would walk out with about $3 million, and the Tigers would be back to square one looking for someone who understands the SEC, who can recruit the fertile area of Baton Rouge and the rest of Louisiana, and who knows how to win.
The search might start and end with Rick Stansbury, the former Mississippi State head coach who was 293-165 and 122-102 in the SEC with the Bulldogs. After resigning, most likely under pressure, he was an assistant at Texas A&M and is currently in his first year as head coach at Western Kentucky.
Perhaps the Tigers will play like their hair is on fire -- which means up to their potential -- and win out to give their coach another season. Don't count on it.
Sports on 02/15/2017