Stanford basketball coach Trent Johnson is leaving to take the head-coaching job at LSU, multiple media outlets are reporting.

The news, which was first reported by Emily Turner of KMSS TV, means the Tigers have a proven winner at the helm of their basketball program. Johnson was the Pac-10 coach of the year this season and is well respected for his coaching acumen and his demeanor, even if what got him the most attention this season was getting ejected from a Tournament game. LSU fired John Brady during the season.

Johnson has been a successful coach at Stanford but may be motivated to leave in part because next year's team won't be nearly as talented as the one he led to the Sweet 16 last year. With the Lopez twins leaving for the NBA, Stanford was already going to look a lot different next season. The new Stanford coach will have a tough job ahead of him.

Even though there are a few games left to play before a champion is crowned, the college basketball coaching carousel is alive and spinning. In the SEC, South Carolina hired Darrin Horn but they aren't the only league school looking for a new coach. LSU needs one too and may also end up with a Kentucky native on their bench.

Travis Ford of UMass has been named by more than one outlet as the leading candidate for the Tiger job. The timing, UMass plays the NIT final tonight, doesn't sit right with Erik Gallant at Minuteblog.

If you are going to blow a journalistic raspberry on a team on the verge of one of the biggest games in school history, please either offer an iron-clad guarantee of accuracy, or provide sources for the information.

I understand the desire for an unfettered run-up to a championship game but this is the nature of the beast. LSU's President used to be the President at UMass, Ford has done good things at UMass and is well-known around the SEC because of his days at Kentucky. This isn't wild speculation, then, but well-reasoned reportage using sources, anonymous though they be, to back it up.

UMass fans must dread losing Ford just as he's put the program back on good footing but I'd guess it's going to happen. They can take solace in the fact that the rumors didn't hurt them against Florida on Tuesday, at least, and hope Ford leaves on a winning note.

The rumors have been that LSU would pursue Southern Cal Coach Tim Floyd. Floyd, as a LSU alum Louisian Tech grad, from Mississippi and seems like a natural fit. Of course, there is the issue of whether LSU would pay what it would take for a name basketball coach. There is also the issue of whether Floyd believes he can recruit the talent like he can at USC.

Of course the trade-off might be that USC might not have as much talent in the near future with the way Floyd has recruited. Creating up-and-down seasons.

O.J. Mayo is certainly done at USC. Taj Gibson is probably leaning towards going, regardless of his declarations of being unsure. Freshman forward, Davon Jefferson, will at least test the draft waters. Daniel Hackett has always seemed to think higher of his ability than others do.

There's also the fact that incoming one-and-done freshman DeMar Rozan cost the Trojans an extra scholarship that they had to give to his buddy Lil' Romeo.

It seems that Floyd might be already nervous about the way he has gone for the one-and-dones.

Floyd said before the Trojans' 80-67 loss to Kansas State in the first round of the NCAA Midwest Regional on Thursday that he might reconsider the benefits of one-year players if they harm the team's Academic Progress Rate.

"It will be a detriment if and when O.J. leaves if he's not academically eligible and costs us a scholarship," Floyd said. "That would be something that would make me review whether or not to give another guy like this an opportunity at some point."

That he would be worried about Mayo's academic eligibility in March, and feel concerned that the APR was too close to the edge can't be a good thing. Suddenly an exit strategy with LSU seems more probable.

Well, I guess John Brady was serious about getting right back to coaching. The former Louisiana State coach was fired in February.

He didn't even take a few months off. He is apparently the new coach of Arkansas State.

Arkansas State will name John Brady its next basketball coach, a source close to Brady has told CBSSports.com.

ASU called a Wednesday press conference to announce the hiring.

Arkansas State had looked at a few SEC retreads including former Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson.

Brady had 3 years left on his contract when he was fired from LSU. He was to get his base salary of $300,000 per year unless he was hired elsewhere. Presumably, the amount would be reduced by the whatever he was paid by another school. Brady really let the LSU Athletic Department off the hook by jumping right back into coaching.

There's still a lot of college hoops to be played this season but I'm going to be bold and make my first prediction for the 2008-09 season: Anthony Grant will be coaching in the Southeastern Conference. I'm not really sticking my neck out, here. Grant, fresh off VCU's upset of Duke in the NCAA Tournament, was all set to take over Florida last year before Billy Donovan reversed course and left the Orlando Magic high and dry.

Now, with the Rams two games up in the CAA and looking to make more March noise, Grant is an even stronger candidate for a big-time job. As it happens, two SEC programs will be looking for a coach. LSU and South Carolina are both interested in Grant, according to various reports, and for good reason. His two years at VCU have been nothing but successful and 10 years as an assistant to Donovan prepared him for life in the SEC.

Grant won't talk about next steps right now and, quite frankly, he wouldn't be the coach he is if he allowed his focus to turn to another school and another season. Grant passed on head jobs while at Florida to wait for the right one, but this is a different situation. He can't do much better at VCU than he has the past two seasons and a poor year or two will take away some of his shine. You have to strike while the iron is hot and none is hotter than Grant right now.

When last we saw the Vols, they were making the scoreboard smoke in a hectic 104-82 win over Florida last Tuesday night. The only smoke seen around Tennessee on Saturday was coming out of Bruce Pearl's ears as his team barely scraped through an ugly two-point win against LSU, a game that was in doubt until JaJuan Smith's steal and layup with about 10 seconds remaining.

At halftime of Tuesday night's game, Tennessee trailed Florida by a score of 44-48, a margin that seems more significant now in light of a much closer 47-45 victory UT squeezed out against LSU Saturday. That's 92 points total for the game by both teams, the same total as Tuesday's game at halftime. Twelve less than the final the Vols put up by themselves against the Gators. Less than 10 points more than Tennessee's per-game average going into Saturday.

To put it simply, the Vols just weren't their usual high-octane selves against LSU. Oh, they took plenty of shots, but didn't make many, obvs. In fact, UT took 60 field goals, only hitting 19. They tried 19 threes, but made just five. And they were sorry from the stripe as well, going just 4-15. JaJuan Smith, who turned out to be the game's hero, made his only shot of the day on that steal and game-winning layup (otherwise missing all seven of his other shots, including five 3s). Only two Vols (Chris Lofton and Wayne Chism) Shot better than 39%.

All of this against the SEC's worst team in LSU: a team that had just fired it's coach and seemed to have no direction. The Jefferson Pilot Lincoln Financial Raycom announcers, though known for their hyperbole, might have been right when they repeatedly stated throughout the game the a LSU win would be the biggest upset in the program's history -- but it wasn't to be. So, on a day that the Tigers could have made a statement about the rest of their season, but didn't, the Vols are left hoping that this game doesn't say too much about them, either.

LSU has fired men's basketball head coach John Brady, multiple media outlets are reporting.

From Gary Parrish of Sportsline:

It's unclear whether Brady will finish the season. If he does not assistant Butch Pierre is expected to take over on an interim basis.

LSU is 8-13 overall, 1-6 in the SEC.

Some coaches that should surface as possible replacements are Southern California's Tim Floyd, Virginia Commonwealth's Anthony Grant and Ole Miss' Andy Kennedy.

Brady, who is losing his job less than two years after taking LSU to a Final Four, has had an up-and-down career since replacing Dale Brown at LSU in 1997. He had losing records in his first two seasons leading the Tigers, including a grand total of six wins in the SEC. But he went 28-6 in his third year and got to the Sweet 16. Overall, he managed just three winning SEC seasons in 11 years at the helm. That's the kind of record that a coach just can't survive.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times teams...

Earlier in the week, our own Andy Katzer wondered whether LSU would win another game this year. That was a totally legit concern for the Bayou Bengals, whose 7-12 record heading into their game against Auburn was far more glamorous than the performance which got them there. LSU was winless in conference play and hadn't won a road game since December of 2006. Any road game.

Fear no more: LSU can beat an SEC team, and they can do it on the road. Auburn fell 81-80 after Marcus Thornton drained a 3-pointer with 3.8 seconds remaining on the clock.

Give credit to the purple Tigers for withstanding an early Auburn barrage. Auburn went on a 9-0 run in the first three minutes of the game, but LSU answered with a 12-1 run of their own to take the lead.

After a tight 39 minutes in which neither team could hold an advantage, the sequence of events in the game's final seconds was... strange. After Thornton's go-ahead trey, Auburn's Quan Prowell stepped on the baseline while trying to inbound the ball, giving possession back to LSU. Auburn promptly fouled Anthony Randolph, who missed the front end of his 1-and-1. Lebo's kids had one final shot with 3 seconds remaining, but it wasn't enough.

The burning questions:

Can LSU build off of this and make a run in the SEC? Answer: Nope.

Is this a big setback for Auburn? Answer: At 2-4 and hampered by a short, injury-plagued bench, they're probably not going to make much noise in the SEC West anyway. Bill Shakespeare said it best: This game was "a tale... full of sound and fury; signifying nothing."

Each weekday, The Daily W asks about the Who, What, Where, When, or Whys of SEC basketball. Today's question:

When did LSU become so awful?

Two years ago LSU went to the Final Four. Last year they went 17-15 and missed the postseason. Going into Wednesday night's game with Auburn, the Bayou Bengals would need to win out in order to beat that win total, and they ain't gonna. Considering that LSU hasn't beaten a team with a RPI better than 144, and the lowest-ranked team they have left is Kentucky (131 -- nine of LSU's last 11 opponents are top 100 RPI), they might not win again.

Last year LSU had six losses by four or fewer points, four in SEC. So far this year, the Tigers haven't won a SEC game yet, but only one of those losses has been as close as four points. Many have been blowouts, including the stinker against Mississippi State in which LSU only scored 39(!) points. So how does one go from Final Four to horrific in just a couple of seasons?

For you LSU hoops fans who have been racking your brains looking for some good news in the Tigers' winless SEC tilt in 2008, I... can't help you. But we can go back in time and enjoy one of the all-time greats, Pistol Pete Maravich, who was probably the best player ever to don an LSU uniform.



Now, I realize 5:40 in YouTube time is the equivalent of the director's cut version of the The Godfather, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. Thy jaw shall drop.

And here's all you really need to know to understand just how sensational Pistol Pete really was:

Also known as "Pistol Pete", he starred in college at Louisiana State University and for three NBA teams. Maravich is still the all-time leading NCAA scorer, averaging a staggering 44.2 points per game, without the benefit of a three-point line and excluding the records of his freshman year due to the fact that when Pete was in his first year of college, the NCAA had separate freshmen and varsity basketball teams and freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity team. It was calculated by LSU coach Dale Brown that Maravich would have averaged 57 points per game with the benefit of a college three-point line.

We'll never see another player like Pistol Pete Maravich.