There are things about the LSU men’s basketball team that head coach Will Wade has been trying to fix for about a month.

For instance, the Tigers have allowed 12.8 offensive rebounds per game in SEC play, including a season-high 22 in Tuesday’s 76-68 win at Texas A&M.

“We were 62nd in the country in defensive rebounding going into SEC play and we’ve dropped to 225th,” Wade said. “That is a plummet.”

Also, impossible to ignore is the Tigers continually coughing up turnovers at a clip of 16.45 in league games tying Texas A&M for the worst in the SEC.

“We have 181 turnovers in SEC play, just shy of 17 per game,” Wade said. “It’s just astounding we’ve won any games with that many turnovers.”

In the last four weeks, LSU (17-7 overall, 5-6 SEC) has won just two games (both were against A&M) in a parity-filled conference dominated at the top by No. 1 Auburn and 5th ranked Kentucky.

Eight SEC teams have five, six or seven conference losses, so any win can advance a team up a place or two in the league standings, like when the Tigers host Mississippi State (14-9, 5-5) Saturday night at 7 in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

“There’s a couple of elite teams in the league that are very, very good and there’s a bunch of us where there’s not much difference,” Wade said. “We’re just going to keep beating each other up. Everybody’s got good players.

“There’s going to be a cluster of teams that finish between 8-10 and 10-8. Most of the league is going to finish with those three records. It’s just digging out as many of them as we can. We’ve lost two at home (Arkansas, Ole Miss). This is a huge game for us. We can’t keep giving them away at home and expect to come out with a decent record.”

Except for Auburn and Kentucky, every league team has fragilities it has tried to avoid. LSU nosedived when senior starting point guard Xavier Pinson sprained a knee vs. Tennessee on Jan. 8 and the Tigers lost their next six of seven before Pinson returned to the lineup and looked near-top throttle at A&M earlier this week.

For the first time in a month, LSU played a first half that appeared organized, under control and confident as the Tigers led by 16 at halftime.

And for the first time in the three games he has appeared in after sitting out six of nine contests since the injury, Pinson demonstrated burst to get past defenders as well as the stamina to play 25 minutes.

Pinson, who transferred to LSU last summer after starting 49 games in three seasons for Missouri, scored 11 points and grabbed 4 rebounds against the Aggies. But his real value is being the steady floor leader the Tigers have missed.

“He just puts us in the right spots,” LSU sophomore forward Tari Eason said of Pinson. “He kind of slows the game down. He has good pace. He's been playing high level basketball for three years now. He's had experience and he really knows what he's doing. He sees things before anyone else sees things.”

Pinson said he did his best to coach his teammates from the bench while he recovered from his injury. But it wasn’t the same as being in live game action.

“It's the difference being on the sideline trying to instill confidence and coach them up,” Pinson said, “and actually guide them on the court and tell them what they need to do. I try my best to get us happy and keep us in something (offensively) throughout the game.”

Wade said Pinson’s worth doesn’t show in his stat line totals.

“There's stuff that you can't quantify that he does,” Wade said. “It's the bad situations that he keeps us out of and the good situations that he gets other guys where they need to be and gets them the ball in those spots.

“He keeps us out of a lot of mistakes. He's able to say, `They've scored two straight baskets. Let's pull it out. Let's run some offense. Let's not take a quick shot. Let's try to get fouled.’ There's a lot of intricacies of the game that he understands that really help us.”

Pinson and his teammates will be challenged by Mississippi State’s physical play. The Bulldogs rank second in the SEC in rebounding margin in league games only.

Ben Howland, in his seventh season as MSU’s head coach, has filled his 2021-22 roster with seven transfers including starters Garrison Brooks (North Carolina). D.J. Jeffries (Memphis), Shakeel Moore (North Carolina State) and Tolu Smith (Western Kentucky).

They all provide support for junior guard Iverson Molinar, who’s the only SEC player and one of four players nationally to score in double figures in every game this season.

He is the only SEC player and one of six Power 5 players to be ranked among the top 10 of their respective leagues in points (18.1, 3rd), field goal percentage (49.2, 4th) and assists (4, tied for 8th). He’s also ranked among the SEC leaders in free throw percentage (88.6,1st) and assist-to-turnover ratio (1.88, 5th). He has scored or assisted on 37.8 percent of MSU's points this season.

Mississippi State is still on the outside looking in as far as an NCAA tourney invite is concerned. The Bulldogs have yet to win against a Quad 1 ranked team like LSU, so it makes the bullseye on the Tigers’ back even larger.

“LSU is a tournament team, and we should be very motivated because they're in and we're not," Howland said. “They're a very good team when they're healthy. They've got to feel good after seeing how both he (Pinson) and the whole team played on the road at A&M. They're going to be very motivated to get back to their early season form where they were one of the most dominant teams in the country."