The LSU Tigers Men's Basketball team had a rough go of it this season, I guess you could say. They had a pretty good non-conference schedule, but once they got to SEC play, they just couldn't keep up.

It was a very disappointing season, especially after they went 9-9 in SEC play a year ago in Matt McMahon's second year. It looked like the program was trending in the right direction after just missing the NCAA Tournament, and even though they were losing a lot of talent, there was hope that 2024-2025 would be the year they made the NCAA Tournament.

Obviously, the didn't happen, and there are a lot of reasons why.

Let's start with something that was completely out of their control: the SEC this year is arguably the best conference college basketball has ever seen. They were historically dominant in non-conference and currently have seven teams ranked in the top-25 in the AP Poll and KenPom rankings. Joe Lunardi currently projects 13 of the 16 teams to make the NCAA Tournament, which is four more than any conference and would shatter the previous record of 11 teams making the tournament from one conference.

Now moving on to things they could control.

Their biggest issue this season has been their offense. Every single part of it wasn't good, which led to them winning just three games in SEC play. Just looked at where they ranked out of the 16 SEC schools in some major offensive categories during conference play.

They didn't rank higher than 14th in ANY offensive statistic. We've pointed to turnovers and three point shooting as major offensive issues, but the truth is, their offense as a whole was the issue.

Despite having five guards - Jordan Sears, Cam Carter, Dji Bailey, Vyctorius Miller and Curtis Givens - who earned a lot of playing time this year, they turned the ball over at an insanely high rate and shot the ball poorly.

Despite having Corey Chest, who's a monster in the paint, they didn't have anybody else who was an elite rebounder and gave up over 10 offensive rebounds per game and struggled to get their own second chance opportunities.

Everything about their offense was just flat out bad this season, which was really disappointing to see, especially after last year where they ranked in the top-half of the league in almost all of those categories.

Defensively, they were actually a really solid team. They were in the top-half of the league in pretty much every major statistical category besides defensive rebounding and were top-five in opponent field goal percentage. They just couldn't stop teams from getting second chance points, which is why they were eighth in scoring defense despite being so good at defending shot attempts.

I think this team really missed Jalen Reed and Tyrell Ward this year. Reed obviously tore his ACL after a very strong start to the season. He would've given them a lot more production in the paint and helped with their rebounding issues. Ward would've given this team a legit three-point shooting threat. He was on fire to end the 2023-2024 season and likely would've started this season if he didn't step away from the team shortly before the season began.

On top of that, McMahon's portal haul proved to be not as good as we thought. Cam Carter was as good as advertised, but Dji Bailey and Jordan Sears provided little offense. Bailey was an elite defender, I'll give him that, but they needed more production from him in the scoring column. Sears just never found his groove and was coming off the bench for a good portion of SEC play.

There is some optimism heading into next year, though. LSU is reportedly backing McMahon with more NIL support after the recent influx on money coming in thanks to revenue sharing, and he has a top-15 freshman class on its way. If he can hit a couple home runs in the portal, there will be a lot of hope heading into year four.

However, if he can't get it done next year, he'll start to feel his seat get really hot.