Perhaps this is what should be expected from a young, talented team like No. 21 LSU that has just two players in its eight-man rotation who played substantial minutes last season.
For the first five to 10 minutes every game, the Tigers play attention deficit disorder basketball that begs such questions as:
“Can anybody guard a 3-point shooter?”
“Is LSU’s best offense clanking shots and having its school of board-crashing piranhas score on putback after putback?”
“Can we officially name the Tigers as `Team Double Digit Deficit'”?
For the third time in the last five games, LSU wandered defensively and squandered offensively itself into double-digit deficit Saturday afternoon in the PMAC before hitting the ignition button in an 83-78 SEC victory over Auburn.
Why does LSU, now 19-4 and 9-1 in league play, keep repeating this crazy pattern of getting slapped in the face until it awakens and turns games into street fights?
“That’s a good question,” said LSU guard Skylar Mays, who broke ever-so slightly out of his recent shooting funk and scored a team-high 20 points. “I don’t think you can have a good answer for that.”
Maybe the Tigers would be juiced from the start if LSU coach Will Wade agreed to start every game trailing by 14 points or so before the opening tip. Just put 14 on the scoreboard for the opponent and move on.
“We pretty much get punched in the mouth and we try to turn it around,” added Tigers’ guard Tremont Waters, who finished with 19 points and 10 assists. “When that happens, we pick up our intensity and play our best basketball."
Auburn’s M.O. is shooting 3-pointers. It entered Saturday averaging 11 3s per game.
Armed with that knowledge, LSU’s defense gave up 11 3s in the first half and fell behind by 16 points at 26-10 with 11:02 left. At that point, six of Auburn’s seven field goals were 3s.
“It’s kind of like the game last year,” said Wade, referring to LSU’s 95-70 loss at Auburn when AU also sank 11 first-half 3s and 14 total. “We weren’t able to settle in before they started barraging us from three. We were able (Saturday) to slowly impose our will.”
Last year, LSU had no will to impose. It also didn’t have the length of Kavell Bigby-Williams, the girth of Naz Reid, and two pogo-sticks named Marlon Taylor and Emmitt Williams to ravage opponents on the offensive boards.
“I had a great game plan,” said Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, whose senior and junior-laden team dropped to 16-7 overall and 5-5 in the SEC. “We had to make threes.
“Give LSU all the credit. They know who they are. They just threw us out of the way and killed us on the boards. They have great size, they have two monsters down there. We’ve got to toughen up. You have to rebound like your life depended on it.”
Which for LSU, despite its inconsistency lately in different phases (especially outside shooting), is something that has been the one constant allowing the Tigers to scrap their way back into games following their opening funks.
LSU outscored Auburn 29-1 on second-chance points, thanks to 22 offensive rebounds. Seven of Bigby-Williams’ team-high 11 rebounds were off teammates’ misses. Reid, who recorded a double-double (13 points, 10 rebounds) and scored in double-digits for the sixth time in the last seven games, collected four offensive boards. Taylor had five offensive rebounds, two fewer than Auburn’s team total.
“It was just a game of whether they were going to make more threes, or we were going to get more offensive rebounds and points in the paint,” Wade said.
For all the backboard banging, it was the 5-11 Waters (as usual) who flipped LSU back in a positive direction.
In the final 1:12 of the first half, he dealt an assist, swiped a steal and scored five points in LSU’s 7-0 scoring run including a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that cut Auburn’s lead to 41-38 at the break.
Then in the first 4:44 of the second half when LSU got on a 13-5 streak to take a five-point lead, Waters drained a trio of 3s including one he banked in with the shot clock about to expire.
Auburn re-heated its outside shooting late to finish with 16 3s. LSU missed just enough free throws to give AU’s Bryce Brown a chance to miss a game-tying three with two seconds left as the crowd of 12,004 exhaled.
“What I love about this team is we don’t back down from anybody and we just keep going,” Mays said. “At the end of the day, we are going to give ourselves a chance to win. We can’t take that for granted.”
Certainly not.
LSU is 5-0 this season in games won in overtime or a 5-point victory margin or less.
Cats have nine lives, so you do the math.
These Tigers should have just a handful of these rope-a-dope wins left, but it seems like getting down for the first 10 minutes gets them up for the last 30.
That’s a strange formula for victory.
But considering LSU is one win away from 20-win season after suffering 22 losses two seasons ago, you accept victories any way you can.
