Last night LSU’s men’s basketball team blew an 18-point second half lead to the worst Kentucky team of this century and found a way to lose their fourth straight game since SEC play began.

Here’s what it looked like when the Wildcats took the game away from Matt McMahon’s team at the buzzer…

She’s right, of course, but there is no point in firing a basketball coach in the middle of the season. Not to mention it’s more expensive than to let McMahon finish the season.

But McMahon had to make the NCAA Tournament to save his job this year and that’s pretty clearly not going to happen at 0-4 in the SEC. Yes, LSU was an impressive 12-1 in the preconference schedule, but it was a terrible, weak schedule which yielded just one quality win – that being the victory over SMU in December.

Three of the four games LSU has lost were against Texas A&M, South Carolina and Kentucky, the last two at home, and those are not NCAA Tournament teams.

McMahon has an excuse. He lost Jalen Reed for the season just a few games in, and he’s been missing star point guard D.J. Thomas for the whole of the SEC schedule. With Thomas he isn’t 0-4; it’s fair to admit that.

Then again, when LSU played Texas Tech earlier in the season, the Tigers were boatraced from the beginning of the game to the end. Thomas was playing that day. Which indicates where LSU sits even at full strength with respect to top-level competition.

It’s his fourth year and McMahon is 14-44 against SEC opposition. That’s a 24 percent win rate. It’s pretty clear that won’t cut it.

So yes – barring a miracle, there are 14 regular season games left, plus one game in the SEC Tournament, and then Matt McMahon is going to get cut loose.

It’s going to cost something on the order of $10 million to buy out McMahon’s contract and that of his assistant coaches, which is absolutely ridiculous. If you’re holding on to any notions that former athletic director Scott Woodward was good at his job, consider that this buyout is going to push the Scott Woodward Dead Contract Money Sweepstakes to upwards of $80 million.

That’s the ugly present. What’s the beautiful future for LSU men’s basketball? Is there one?

Well, hope does spring eternal. And while the current roster is almost certainly going to disintegrate into the transfer portal or the various pro leagues overseas after this season (at 0-4, it’s not like there are any great losses or irreplaceable players when they do scatter to the four winds after McMahon’s firing), what we know is that a good coach can rebuild a roster in a couple of weeks with the right resources.

I’ve got a short list of coaches I’d contact if LSU is running a real search for McMahon’s replacement. Two of the four – Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg and Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger – would be big swings, but I don’t think either would be impossible hires. If AD Verge Ausberry was going to go the up-and-coming route with a mid-major coach, something you’d figure he’s less likely to do given that McMahon was a mid-major coach who proved he didn’t have what it takes to run a top-level Power Four conference program, I’d look at Jerrod Calhoun at Utah State and Josh Schertz at St. Louis.

Any one of those four would almost certainly fix this problem and put LSU back into contention.

But none of them are getting contacted until the elephant leaves the room, and honestly, you should not bet against that elephant having a seat in front of the door and refusing to move.

Will Wade’s contract at NC State was written more or less so he could park there on his way elsewhere. After only one year his walkaway buyout drops from $5 million down to $3 million. That’s pretty cheap.

There is word that Wade and NC State’s athletic director Boo Corrigan aren’t on the best of terms. Corrigan, who’d been the AD at West Point before he took his current job, is a very buttoned-up kind of guy, and Wade is a bit more chaotic. For example, earlier this season there was this…

And a few days ago there was this…

Wade is fiery and passionate and he’ll go off Bobby Knight-style, perhaps more now than when he was at LSU from 2018-21. That spooks the AD over there, even though it’s building a brand the fans love.

It ought to be remembered, though it isn’t like anybody in Louisiana ever forgot, that LSU’s new school president Dr. Wade Rousse hired Wade as McNeese State’s basketball coach when Rousse was there. And in a real sense Rousse is in his current job atop the LSU system due to the notoriety and attention Wade brought to the progress McNeese was making under Rousse’s direction, based on the fact he worked a miraculous turnaround on the hardcourt and put the school on the map.

Rousse is a big Wade fan. Wade has very intense support among a big chunk of LSU’s fan base, including some pretty well-heeled boosters and alumni. His passion and fighting spirit was a great fit at LSU during his first tour; there’s no reason it wouldn’t be a hit again, especially in contrast to McMahon’s bland passivity. LSU fans need spice to get interested, and Wade provided it. His legend never was able to fully take off because of the stupid FBI wiretap scandal which exposed that he was paying players – just like every other college basketball coach was at the time, and now it’s completely legal under NCAA rules to do so. Wade’s second season, LSU won the SEC and he got suspended in time for the NCAA Tournament; he couldn’t coach a team which made the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. Then COVID canceled the NCAA Tournament in Wade’s 3rd year; his team was poised to potentially make a run that season. Then in his fourth year, he was fired at the end of the regular season.

We never saw Will Wade getting a shot at postseason success, which, let’s face it, is where legends get made.

So maybe the Matt McMahon years were just the desert interlude. Maybe the second coming of Will Wade is mere weeks away.

Either way, this status quo is not going to last. It can’t. LSU’s men’s basketball program has suffered too much already.