No. 18 LSU hopes to snap 3-game losing streak Wednesday in the PMAC
His team is on a three-game losing streak, his two most experienced players are hurt and he’s trying to simplify things to the point his squad doesn’t keep imploding offensively.
But LSU men’s basketball coach Will Wade vows his 18th ranked Tigers (15-4 overall, 3-4 SEC), who host Texas A&M (15-4, 4-2 SEC) in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for a Wednesday 8 p.m. tip, are going “to dig our way out of it.”
LSU is much in the same predicament it was before it played its worst defensive game of the season in Saturday’s 64-50 loss at Tennessee. Senior starters Xavier Pinson (sprained knee) and Darius Days (sprained ankle) are likely not available to face the Aggies, but haven't been totally ruled out.
Yet there is no “woe is me” from Wade.
“I told them (his team) yesterday the best views come from the roughest climbs,” Wade said at his Tuesday press conference. “That’s just the way it is.”
LSU’s deficiencies haven’t wavered. In SEC play, Wade’s team is averaging 16 turnovers, 22.6 fouls and 12.4 offensive rebounds per game, meaning it’s giving away too many possessions and providing opponents with 61 more free throw attempts (173 to 111) than the Tigers.
Pinson’s absence has completely thrown LSU’s offensive execution out of whack. His calm demeanor and his ability to read game pace and play at different tempos is something his replacement sophomore Eric Gaines doesn’t possess yet.
“Gaines is built for speed,” Wade said. “He could do that for 18 to 20 minutes (when coming off the bench). But he can't play at the speed that we need him to play it for 35 minutes (as a starter). When we're playing him an extended amount of time, he's got to change speeds. It's a totally different ballgame.
“He’s getting better, but that’s not what he's trained to do. We just can't do exactly (offensively) what we've been working on all the time all year. We had a little bit of time to flip some of our stuff philosophically until we can get everybody back.
"We were built as a team to have a combination of athleticism and skill. We don't have that right now. We've got a bunch of athletes, our skills are pretty much gone and that's why we look like the way we look on offense. We need to take shots that play to our strengths.”
Wade said after the loss at Tennessee it was time to make changes with his offense including personnel. It’s likely sophomore reserve forward Tari Eason, who leads LSU in nine stat categories despite playing just 24.2 minutes per game off the bench, will get his first start of the season against A&M.
Eason averages 16 points and has had more 20 points or more scoring performances (six) than any other LSU player.
Texas A&M, which has lost eight straight games to LSU, might be the most improved team in the SEC.
Third-year A&M coach Buzz Williams’ squad already has five more wins than the Aggies had last season (8-10) and is just three victories shy off his first year record (16-14) in 2019-20.
Like most of the SEC, he has quickly flipped his team’s talent through the transfer portal. Four of five A&M starters are transfers.
They include guards Marcus Williams (Wyoming) and Tyrece Radford (Virginia Tech and a former Baton Rouge McKinley High star) and forwards Henry Coleman III (Duke) and Ethan Henderson (Arkansas).
Coleman has led A&M in scoring three out of the last four games.
A&M won eight straight games including its first four in league play before losing its last two to Kentucky (64-58) in College Station last Wednesday and 76-73 at Arkansas in overtime Saturday. The Aggies won the earlier game 86-81 vs. the Hogs at home, a team LSU lost to 65-58 on Jan. 15 to start the Tigers current losing streak.
“It (LSU) will be the most talented team we’ve played so far,” said Williams, who was hired at A&M by then-Aggies and now LSU athletic director Scott Woodward. “They put so much pressure on the rim, off the bounce and get to the middle of the floor. It fuels how they operate.”