Tigers reach halfway point of their SEC schedule vs. Ole Miss Tuesday

Just about halfway through the SEC men’s basketball schedule, it’s hard to tell who LSU coach Will Wade needs more – a voodoo doctor to instantly heal injuries or a shooting coach to fix the 25th ranked Tigers penchant for missing shots close to the basket.

Wade is hoping good ‘ol fashioned daily treatment and rehab will ease the pain of several of his bruised and tired players. They are playing an overload of minutes as previously starting senior point guard Xavier Pinson works back into the rotation and starting senior forward Darius Days fights through a sprained ankle.

Pinson sprained his knee in a Jan. 8 victory over Tennessee and missed five consecutive games before playing seven minutes in LSU’s 77-68 dead-on-arrival loss at TCU in Saturday’s SEC/Big 12 Challenge. Days sat out last Wednesday’s 70-64 win over Texas A&M, then started vs. TCU, played 33 minutes and had a double-double of 14 points and 12 rebounds.

“We’ve had some guys (starting guards Eric Gaines and Brandon Murray) that are banged up we've been putting out there for major minutes,” said Wade, whose team (16-5 overall, 4-4 SEC) hosts Ole Miss (11-10, 2-6 SEC) Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. “We’ve got to play through it. If we can get everybody healthy, we'll be better off on the back end of things. But at this point, you just don't know if we'll ever get everybody back healthy again.

“So, if we can't, we just have to patch it together and piece it together from here on until the end of the season.”

Before Gaines’ injury, Wade stuck with an 8-man rotation that had delivered a 15-1 overall start including 3-1 in the SEC. Then three games after Gaines was hurt, Days sprained his ankle in a Jan. 19 loss at Alabama and re-sprained it in a Jan. 22 loss at Tennessee.

“We put in 10 guys in the first half Saturday (at TCU) and we just can't get in rhythm,” Wade said. “I’d love to get everybody back healthy and get into firm rotations. It was so seamless there for about 14 or 15 games, seamless for the same eight guys. It hasn't been that way through injuries and through who's available and that sort of thing.

“One guy being out affects a lot more people than just the one guy or the one position. It affects a lot of different things. It affects the rotations and it affects practice.”

Fatigue has certainly reduced how much full-court defensive pressure LSU uses, something the Tigers feed off.

“Our halfcourt defense is solid but it ain't nothing special without that press,” Wade said. “Every game we've been getting a little bit worse defensively the last couple of weeks. Part of it is we’ve got guys out there for a long time.”

As far as LSU’s shooting woes, Wade has hired as an analyst a former college coach (whose name Wade won’t divulge) who works with numerous NBA players.

“This guy's one of most detailed people I've ever been around,” Wade said. “He's phenomenal. I feel like an idiot every time I get off Zoom just because of how smart he is. And I feel like we haven't done enough to help our guys sometimes.

“We used him a couple of weeks ago with the turnover issue and we're getting better there. He's an expert at shooting, turnovers, footwork and finishing (drives to the basket). He gave us some great ideas as it relates to floaters, touch shots and layups that we're gonna start working on.”

The Tigers are supposedly entering the less challenging part of the SEC schedule. It’s based on the fact they currently have one remaining ranked team (at Kentucky on Feb. 23) on their regular season schedule after opening league play with four of eight games vs. three ranked teams.

Ole Miss, like many other teams this season, has gotten instant help from the transfer portal, picking up players from Georgia, Duke and Miami.

Freshman guard Daeshun Ruffin (12.5 points per game) and sophomore guard Matthew Murrell (10.5 rpg) are the only two healthy Rebels’ averaging in double figures. The starting lineup is anchored by 7-foot, 245-pound graduate student Nysier Brooks, who played three seasons for Cincinnati before transferring last year to Miami.

“He’s a beast of rebounder,” Wade said.