| Hello from my home office (well, every newsletter can't be from Augusta or the Final Four): While the football team won the SEC West in year one under Brian Kelly, LSU won its first-ever NCAA women's basketball title under Kim Mulkey and Jay Johnson's baseball Tigers have been ranked No. 1 the entire season, the 2022-23 men's basketball season was an unmitigated flop. The Tigers finished last in the SEC at 2-16 and 14-19 overall in Matt McMahon's first season. A lot of LSU fans regard McMahon as a flop. Certainly he's been under a harsh spotlight because of comparisons to athletic director Scott Woodward's other high-profile hires in Kelly, Mulkey and Johnson. Of course, none of those three had to deal with huge specter of potential NCAA sanctions (Kelly has dealt with a small cloud of them) in the way that McMahon has. Monday, LSU"s now second-year men's basketball coach sat down with our Sheldon Mickles for a wide-ranging Q and A. He talked everything from recruiting to NIL to scheduling, and generally where the Tigers have to go from here to achieve competitiveness in the always-tough SEC. The rest of our newsletter is wall-to-wall baseball. Jay Johnson spoke to the media Monday, coming off a three-game sweep at Ole Miss, and talked about what he thinks of midweek games. The Tigers host Nicholls State on Tuesday at Alex Box Stadium. Johnson also gave an update on injuries, including something of an explanation on why Tommy White left the Ole Miss series finale on Sunday. Johnson is not like his predecessor, Paul Mainieri, prone to giving minute details on injuries. What you get in this story is pretty much the norm. As we said earlier, the Tigers remain No. 1 in the major polls. Whether or not LSU projects as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament is another matter, as our Patrick Magee takes a look at the NCAA Tournament projections. That's all for today, folks. As ever, we appreciate you reading and subscribing. You are the NCAA Tournament to our projections. And if you're in the Shreveport-Bossier City area, remember The Advocate is coming to your city this summer, so please be looking out for our local content there. Let's do this again Thursday morning, shall we? Scott Rabalais | 
