LSU hires new basketball coach

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BATON ROUGE, La., April 13 (UPI) -- Louisiana State University announced Friday the school had hired Johnny Jones to take over as men's basketball coach.

Jones, who has coached at the University of North Texas for the last 11 years, played at LSU during the early 1980s. He was also an assistant coach for the Tigers for 14 years.

"I am extremely excited about this opportunity and I can't wait to get back there to Baton Rouge and LSU to get started," Jones said in a statement. "This is certainly a dream come true to return to a place that has so many memories for me."

LSU Coach Trent Johnson resigned last week to take the same job with Texas Christian University. He had been at LSU for four years.

Jones had a 190-146 record at North Texas in a tenure that included two trips to the NCAA Tournament. The Eagles missed a chance to go to the tourney again this year when it lost in the finals of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament to Western Kentucky.