Column: Jones Wins His LSU Debut
by Scooter Hobbs
4/18/2012
BATON ROUGE — Johnny Jones won himself a press conference Monday. Big time. In fact, at times during his formal introduction to the LSU basketball community — a reintroduction, actually — it looked like he was running up the score. That can be way over-rated, of course, as press conferences, even formal introductory ones, don’t go into the formal won-loss record. Nor is there any scientific evidence that they translate into success for the program after the TV cameras are turned off. Maybe the most lackluster performance at one of these introductory galas came from none other than Nick Saban himself, who turned out to be a pretty fair hire. It also came to light later that, at the time, Saban was winging it on about 50 hours since his last honest contact with a pillow. If there was a worse debut, some of us are old enough to remember Bill Arnsparger, and that didn’t turn out too badly either. But, in this case, in this sport at this school, it was important for Jones to capture the room, to nail the press conference, up to and including the perfect dismount for a standing ovation among all the ex-players and ex-fans and former program hangers-on in attendance.
