LSU was teetering after its second-half collapse to Houston in a 82-76 loss, and Will Wade could sense it.

The team was 7-3 with a tough matchup in Las Vegas coming up against Saint Mary’s when the coach decided a change in philosophy was needed.

He kicked out all his assistants and had a closed meeting with the players to ask what needed to change.

Junior transfer Marlon Taylor said Wade and the coaching staff went ‘softer’ after that meeting, but that’s not exactly how Wade would put it.

More forgiving?

“Forgiving is definitely not the way to describe it,” Wade said. “We just kind of — I told them what I thought, and they told me what they thought. It’s not what I want to do; it’s what gets the most out of our team. It’s not necessarily how I want to do things, but it’s what they respond to and what works the best with these guys. They told me some things, and the staff and I adjusted.”

Since the meeting, LSU has won six straight which Wade believes is a product of becoming closer as a team.

“I would say I’m just more understanding,” Wade said. “You want to be judged on your intent, but most people judge you on your actions. Your actions don’t necessarily meet your intent all the time. I think we’re just trying to be a little more understanding of the intent as opposed to the actions. I think most people would like that. They’d rather be judged on their intent than maybe how it comes off and how their actions are. We try to look at the intent a lot more than we look at the actions.”

That change within the program can most notably be shown in the post-game dance that Wade performed after the Tigers recent win over No. 18 Ole Miss.

It was a pregame bet between the players and Wade that if the Tigers pulled off the win, Wade would come into the locker room dancing. Sure enough the coach was a man of his word.

“You’ve got to have fun,” Wade said. “The fun’s in the winning. You want to have fun when you win. We don’t ever want winning to be miserable, so you’ve got to have fun when you win. It’s a good locker room. We haven’t won many like that so that was fun, but when you get on the plane, you crank the film up and get right back at it.”

The players had mixed reviews on Wade’s dancing skills with Taylor admitting Wade is one of the Tigers best dancers while junior guard Skylar Mays disagreeing.

"That was the first time I’ve seen those moves, awful," Mays said. "Even though he's not the best dancer, we want to keep him dancing."

Winning may create "fun," but LSU knows it has a lot more winning to do to be satisfied, starting Saturday night with a matchup against South Carolina, a team that started slowly but has caught fire with four straight SEC victories.

In two of their conference wins this season against Florida and Vanderbilt, the Gamecocks trailed by 14 and 13 points with under 10 minutes to go and found ways to claw and scrap back to get wins.

This South Carolina team has proven itself tough and physical, in the traditional mold of coach Frank Martin, combined with a multitude of different defensive looks that Wade said has given LSU problems this season.

The Gamecocks are led by junior forward Chris Silva, who was on the team that went to the Final Four just two years ago, and freshman A.J. Lawson, who is averaging a team-high 13.3 points per game.

One area LSU continues to improve is its efficiency from the 3-point line. After an up-and-down non-conference showing from beyond the arc, the Tigers are hitting 3's at a 40 percent clip in their first three SEC games.

But Wade doesn’t know how sustainable that percentage is moving forward, which means the Tigers will need to keep improving in other areas.

“If you’re not making threes, then you have to be able to offensive rebound,” Wade said. “You’ve got to be able to check out and not give up so many second-chance points. We’ve got to be able to clean up those details. You can’t get all excited just because shots are going in. You’ve got to clean up other areas of the game and when your shots go in, that’s a bonus.”

LSU knows it can’t take South Carolina lightly and wants to continue to build that home-court advantage that has helped win 16 straight games at the PMAC. Wade and the players made it clear that another big showing from the student section would only help in their quest to remain undefeated in the SEC.

“When our students are here like they were for the Alabama game, that’s double the excitement when our students are engaged like that,” Wade said. “Hopefully we’ll have that as we move forward here because that’s what we go into on the road. Hopefully we’ll continue to have that here. I think protecting your home court is the first part of being a really, really good program.”

“Knowing that we can win here and have a great fan base here to support us has us excited for Saturday,” Mays said.