LSU men’s basketball coach Johnny Jones will not return as the Tigers coach, athletic director Joe Alleva announced on Friday.
“I met with coach Jones early this morning and informed him that he will be relieved of his duties as head basketball coach,” Alleva said.
Assistant coaches Robert Kirby, Randy Livingston and Brendan Suhr have also been fired, Alleva said.
Deputy director of athletics Eddie Nunez will oversee the basketball program in the interim. Nunez played basketball two seasons at the University of Florida from 1996-98 and worked as an basketball administrative assistant basketball coach at Marquette for one year.
Jones’ firing comes on the heels of a 2016-17 season that included a school record 15-game losing streak and a 2-16 conference record.
The Tigers’ 10-21 record this season is the least amount of wins in a season since 1997, when LSU finished 9-18 under then-first year coach John Brady.
LSU’s basektball program ultimately needed to move into a new “direction” Alleva said, after the Tigers last two seasons.
“Obviously, last year was not up to our expectations,” Alleva said. “This year, when you lose 19 out of 21 games, that’s pretty obvious. I think the past two years have been a bit of a disappointment.”
The decision to wait until after the season to fire Jones was the appropriate thing to do, Alleva said. 
Alleva has said in the past his policy is to wait until after the season is done with to evaluate a coach.

“Maybe he [Jones] would have won the SEC championship,” Alleva said. “You wait until the end of the season, that’s the right thing to do.”
Jones won 39 games in his first two seasons at LSU — the most by any LSU coach in his first two years — and Alleva then decided to give Jones a two-year contract extension and a $400,000 pay raise, bringing his salary to $1.5 million.
Jones’ contract runs through 2019, and will owe Jones $400,000 per year, according to buyout details listed in his contract.
The search for a new basketball coach will begin soon, Alleva said.
But it could take a while for LSU to zero in on a few candidates because of the NCAA tournament.
How much money LSU spends on its next coach will also depend on their resume, Alleva said. 
“My track record is I pay people compensatory to what their experience is and what they bring to the table,” Alleva said. 
Alleva plans to conduct a “national search” with the consultation of a search firm. LSU used a search firm for its football coaching hire, according to a story by AL.com.
“I think we will probably do it very similarly to the way we did the football search,” Alleva said about LSU’s coaching search. “I think it will be a very similar situation.”
Alleva intends to hire a coach that’s a proven winner and can get LSU’s hoops team back in the NCAA tournament on a consistent basis.
Even if the coach isn’t the best “fit.”
“I’m looking for someone who is a proven winner,” Alleva said. “Someone who has won and has experience in the business and can bring enthusiasm and passion to the program. Not saying Johnny didn’t do that, it just didn’t work out. This is kind of a marriage. There’s It’s a lot of marriages that when they start, you think ‘Oh, it’s the perfect marriage’ but they don’t work out. That’s all this is.”