Curtis Givens now entering portal

Can't really blame him

Not surprising in this landscape. Find someone as good or better

The one freshman who I thought McMahon played too much, but understood he was trying to develop. That didn't work out very well.

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Only two players from last year returning

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He averaged 4 pts, I'm sure he will be missed.

I don't think McMahon is a good coach, in fact, I think he's a terrible basketball coach, but let's not act like Curtis Givens is a big loss. We've lost others on last year's team that'll hurt a lot more than losing Givens. We pretty much needed a whole new team anyways.

I hate losing Vyctorius, Ward and a couple others, though.

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yet every year the roster is completely overhauled.

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And we were told "year 0" didn't count because he had to get a whole new roster.

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It’s laughable that he’s been retained for this long. He has proved that he can not assemble a quality roster, yet every year the roster is completely overhauled.

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Win or lose, the roster of every team has to be significantly overhauled every year. That's college basketball today. A successful HC has to be able to build a roster, win with it, lose most of it in the offseason, build a significantly new roster, then win again.

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Matt McMahon is not the right fit for this program on this NIL era.

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That's where I am. His entire career prior to coming to LSU was spent at the mid-major level. The model there was to get second-tier recruits and develop them over 3-4 years into an experienced group. That's not really how it's worked at the major conf level for a while. Even before NIL, schools often kept their best players for only a year or two before they entered the draft.

In year 1 McMahon was forced to go heavy with transfers. But he also signed a pretty good HS class given late start. I think his initial plan was to build the program like mid-major programs were built by stacking HS recruting classes with the roster in a position to really pop by year 3...then keep the train rolling from there.

Then he got destroyed in year 1 and he lost two of his 4 signees. Year 2 he made it a point to "get older" through the portal in order to compete. LSU did compete to some degree, but it wasn't a great season. He then kind of went back to the prior model by signing a 4 person (good) HS class. Once again, disastrous results. Now he's going back, either by choice or by force, to basically the year 1 approach.

Regardless, he's yet to prove he can take a largely new roster and, in essentially 10 months, make it a winning team. But that's what a college HC has to be able to do today. If you are a HC who hates that model, I get it. But that means being a major conf. HC probably isn't for you.

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His entire career prior to coming to LSU was spent at the mid-major level. The model there was to get second-tier recruits and develop them over 3-4 years into an experienced group. That's not really how it's worked at the major conf level for a while. Even before NIL, schools often kept their best players for only a year or two before they entered the draft.

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That model worked for plenty of non-blue blood programs before NIL and portal era. I think it could've worked at LSU with the right coach. I don't think it's a realistic option anymore and I feel like McMahon can't win in a program without roster continuity.

I actually loved the idea when he was first hired of recruiting top 25 classes, with 3-4 year players and having steady success with rosters laden with experience and maturity. Sprinkle in a one-and-done player when we can get one. Those teams historically have done well tournament time. That obviously isn't working out for a variety of reasons.

i guess the excuse for losing will now be to give McMahon some time because he had to build a team from scratch.