Compare the 2019-2020 LSU basketball roster to the 2018-19 Tigers’ SEC championship team, and one thing jumps out.

Last year’s team had 6-11 Kavell Bigby-Williams and 6-10 Naz Reid controlling the paint and banging bodies for rebounds.

The current Tigers, who play at Louisiana Tech Saturday at 4:30 p.m. in a Hoops 4 Disaster Relief exhibition game, have no one taller than 6-9.

Third-year LSU coach Will Wade doesn’t feel at a disadvantage. Instead, a shorter team is in his wheelhouse.

“Last year was much more of an adjustment for me, we’ve never had two or three big kids,” Wade said at his Monday preseason press conference. “I’ve always had smaller and quicker teams. I’m much more used to coaching a team like the team we’ve got now. This team is much more normal to what I feel very, very comfortable coaching.”

Five of LSU’s top eight players return, including senior starters Skylar Mays and Marlon Taylor, from last year’s 28-7 Sweet 16 team that was 16-2 in the SEC. An August trip to Spain where the Tigers went 3-1 was a jumpstart to meshing returnees and new faces.

Taylor and sophomore forwards Emmitt Williams and Darius Days were praised by Wade for their off-season improvement.

“Marlon has just been a great athlete who plays basketball and now I told him that he has to be a great basketball player who is a great athlete,” Wade said. “He’s got to be able to incorporate some thinking, understand where to be defensively, and not solely rely on his athleticism. That’s something he’s really improved on and he’s taken an interest to the film room.

“With Emmitt, fans will still see the same junkyard dog, tough guy that’s getting rebounds and pounding the glass. That’s who he is and that’s what makes him a great player. But he’s expanded his (shooting) range. It’s going to make teams come out and guard us and make things a little more difficult on guys.

“The number one thing with Darius is that he needs to stay on the court (and stay out of foul trouble). Last year, he was one of the best offensive rebounders in the entire country. He’s our best three-point shooter, so we just have to keep him on the court.”

The Tigers will have eight new faces, including two players who redshirted last year, two freshmen signees, two junior college signees and two walk-ons who transferred from elsewhere.

The immediate impact newbies are Trenton Wadford and Charles Manning.

Watford is 6-9, 235-pound five-star freshman from Mountain Brook (Ala.) High where he led the school to three consecutive Class 7A state championships. He averaged 23.7 points, 11.8 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.5 blocks during his senior season. He finished his career as the all-time Alabama high school rebounding leader with 1,909.

Manning is a hard-nosed 6-5, 180-pound junior college transfer. He was a third-team NJCAA All-American last season after leading Florida SouthWestern State to a fifth-place finish at the NJCAA national tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas. He averaged 16.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.1 steals.

The SEC coaches’ preseason poll slotted LSU to finish third in the league.

“The reality is we have a very good team and we’ve got very talented players,” Wade said. “But we don’t quite have the margin for error as last year. Last year we had a little larger margin of error. If we made mistakes, we could erase those mistakes with some plays where we were the only team in the gym that could make those plays.

“Just because we won’t have the same margin of error it doesn’t mean we won’t have a very, very good year and could be just as good as last year and maybe better. We’re just going to have to be tighter in a lot of areas than last year. We’re going to have to really, really play to our strengths and minimize some of the high-risk stuff that we did last year. We’re just going to have to be a lot simpler and a lot steadier.”

LSU opens the season at home against Bowling Green on Nov. 9. The Tigers have 12 non-conference games, including eight at home before opening SEC play at Tennessee on Jan. 4.

Also, LSU will participate in the Big 12/SEC Challenge when it plays at Texas on Jan. 25.