Riding high in the SEC, No. 18 LSU is heading to a familiar place for coach Will Wade even though it has been a house of horrors at times for past Tiger teams.
“We had season tickets growing up; we sat in 2L, Row 10,” said Wade, a Nashville native, of Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gymnasium where LSU plays the Commodores Wednesday at 8 p.m. “We called it Memorial Magic.”
With its benches located on the opposite baselines rather than court-side and odd shape, playing there has been difficult even for the best SEC teams. LSU is 37-16 in Nashville against Vandy.
The game looks like a mismatch with LSU (17-4, 8-0) riding a 10-game winning streak and Vanderbilt (8-13, 0-8) on the opposite end of the standings. But Wade feels there’s plenty of room for improvement.
“One of our players said it best: We’re trending in the right direction but we’re not peaking,” Wade said. “We need a little bit more of a spike as opposed to plateauing.
“Every game is a three-day season (including practice days). We have our own way of doing things. We need to concentrate on that.”
LSU jumped to a 24-point lead on Ole Miss last time out but frittered away much of it before finishing off the Rebels. The culprit was a lack of energy coming out after halftime.
“We had good energy and effort against Mississippi but we have to sustain that better, or it will come back to bite us,” Wade said.
The Commodores are trying to rally after losing sophomore forward and SEC leading scorer Aaron Nesmith to a stress fracture in his foot two games into the league schedule. He was averaging 23.0 points per game and is likely out for the season.
Point guard Saben Lee leads the ‘Dores with 16 points and 4.5 assists per game while Scotty Pippen Jr. is averaging 11.2. Former NBA player Jerry Stackhouse is in his first season coaching the Commodores.
“They play really hard, scrappy,” Wade said. “The effort level has been consistent. They play with an edge. You can see his (Stackhouse’s) NBA background. He’s got hundreds of sets it seems, they are very good out of timeouts. He’s good at getting whoever is hot in isolation.
“They shoot a ton of threes, almost 46 percent of their shots are 3s. They draw the third most fouls in the league and they don’t foul very much on defense. You have to win at the free throw line and contest their 3s, guard without fouling.”
LSU has been getting solid play from a starting lineup in which each player averages in double figures. Marlon Taylor and Aundre Bryant have been the key contributors off the bench. It may soon get even better with Charles Manning Jr. about a week away from returning.
Manning is rehabbing after foot surgery because of an injury suffered against Texas A&M Jan. 14. Wade said the earliest he could return is Feb. 11 against Missouri.
“We’re not going to travel him to Vanderbilt,” Wade said. “He’s been running on the treadmill, moving a little and shooting. We don’t have everything we need for him to do rehab at Vanderbilt and we don’t want him to miss a day and a half of rehab.
“The earliest could be the Missouri game next Tuesday, and then any time after that. Charles has done a phenomenal job with rehab.”
