By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry has borrowed former LSU athletic director Scott Woodward’s playbook as far as dealing with a coach on the ropes.
In 2017 when Woodward was Texas A&M’s athletic director, Aggies’ football coach Kevin Sumlin was coming off three straight 8-5 seasons and two 4-4 Southeastern Conference marks after a 3-5 ledger.
“Coach Sumlin knows he has to win. He has to win this year,” Woodward said on the Paul Finebaum Show during the SEC Spring Meetings on May 30, 2017. “He has to do better than he has done in the past.”
Sumlin didn’t. He finished the 2017 regular season 7-5 and 4-4 with a 45-21 loss at LSU and was fired the next day.
Four days after Woodward, as LSU athletic director, fired LSU football coach Brian Kelly last Oct. 26, which was the day after a 49-25 loss to Texas A&M, Ausberry replaced Woodward, who was fired on Oct. 30.
Now Ausberry has publicly issued a mandate to struggling LSU men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon, who is coming off a 14-18 and 3-15 season in 2024-25 and is 12-4 and 0-3 now.
“We’ve already had some discussions about what the expectations are,” Ausberry told the Baton Rouge Advocate early this week. “One thing we want to do is make sure we’re in the NCAA Tournament. We made that very clear to Matt at the beginning of the year – that’s where we need to be.”
LSU is 2-0 in its last 2 second halves … from the meaningless stat department. https://t.co/nfSIt2WWQX
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) January 10, 2026
McMahon’s Tigers are ranked No. 44 in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) for the NCAA Tournament, which is not bad … if LSU starts winning soon, as in Wednesday night against Kentucky (10-6, 1-2 SEC) at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center (6 p.m., SEC Network).
At the moment, LSU is the only winless team in the 16-team SEC. Then it will be another unranked opponent in Missouri (12-4, 2-1 SEC) at home on Saturday (2:30 p.m., SEC Network).
With No. 19 and defending national champion Florida (12-5, 3-1 SEC) hosting LSU on Tuesday (6 p.m., ESPN2), McMahon likely needs to win the next two to even to be able to start thinking about the Big Dance, which he has never made in his previous three seasons at LSU. He was 14-19 and 2-16 in his first season in 2022-23 and 17-16 and 9-9 with an NIT bid in 2023-24.
“We’ll see where it goes,” Ausberry said. “Hopefully, Wednesday night with Kentucky coming in, we might get a little traction, do some things.”
McMahon’s team, though, is missing its best tire – junior star point guard Dedan Thomas Jr., a transfer from UNLV who was leading the SEC in assists with 7.0 a game and scoring 16.2 a game before a lower leg injury sidelined him for all three SEC games. And he is doubtful for Wednesday night’s game.
“He is getting better,” McMahon said. “But still not in a position to make a decision on Wednesday or Saturday.”
McMahon listed Thomas as doubtful in the his availability report to the SEC on Tuesday.
“He’s doing everything in his power to get back on the court,” McMahon said.
And McMahon just lost veteran, 6-foot-10 starting power forward Jalen Reed for the season to an Achilles injury last month. He was averaging 9.5 points and 5.7 rebounds a game off the bench as he was coming back from a knee injury that cost him all but eight games of the previous season.
“Desperation is too strong a word, but focus and attention to detail will be very important,” McMahon said of the Kentucky game.
It may be exactly the right word.
“If something changes, and it it looks better, if the team gives us some hope somewhere, we can look at it,” Ausberry said. “But we’d like to be as close to the NCAA Tournament as possible this year.”
LSU LAST REACHED NCAA TOURNAMENT IN 2022 WITH WILL WADE’S TEAM ABSENT WILL WADE
The last time LSU made the NCAA Tournament was in 2022 under interim coach Kevin Nickelberry, who replaced coach Will Wade just before the tournament as Woodward fired Wade amid a laundry list of major NCAA recruiting violations. But Wade resurfaced as McNeese State’s coach in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons with great NCAA Tournament success and rode that to the head coaching job at North Carolina State for this season.
Woodward replaced Sumlin with Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher in 2018, and Fisher finished worse than Sumlin, going 8-4 and 4-4 in 2021, 5-7 and 2-6 in 2022 and 6-4 and 4-3 in 2023 and getting fired.
The two major injuries that have hurt LSU may be considered by LSU’s major donors and Ausberry as they consider McMahon’s future, should he have another losing season or an average one not good enough for the NCAA Tournament.
LSU’s major donors and Ausberry may also have to consider just how much they can afford to spend on men’s basketball, considering the $91 million contract recently going to new LSU football coach Lane Kiffin along with an estimated $25 million walking around money for Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) and the NCAA Transfer Portal. And that on the heels of a $54 million buyout to Kelly.
Look who won his first big game since beating Nick Saban and Alabama in 2022! Brian Kelly gets last laugh as LSU surrenders and plans to pay him full $54 million buyout:https://t.co/8tOvUwXDPf
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 27, 2025
LSU also spends a lot on women’s basketball, which has continued to lose several million a year, but it won the 2023 national championship, reached Elite Eights in 2024 and ’25 and is ranked No. 6 at 16-2 and 2-2. LSU Baseball is also getting more and more expensive with its NIL and portal recruiting, but it has continued to turn a profit while winning national championships in 2023 and ’25.
LSU men’s basketball also makes money, largely due to the financial success of the NCAA Tournament and its television packages, and thus the SEC teams involved and the payouts to all league programs from that.
“Soon, major programs are going to have to decide what sports they really want to be great at and those they don’t really need to be great at,” one source told Tiger Rag recently.
Lowered expectations and lowered expenditures for men’s basketball could keep McMahon employed in the short term even with a non-NCAA Tournament season, considering the financial burdens LSU keeps putting on itself via other sports, football in particular.
“If he doesn’t make it (the NCAA Tournament),” Ausberry said, “we’ll have to reevaluate.”
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