When the Maravich Center horn sounded on December 29, LSU looked the part.
The Tigers had led for 38:13 of 40 minutes against Southern Miss and coasted to a 28-point win to cap non-conference play 12-1. LSU had dispatched SMU by 12 in New Orleans. Drake and DePaul posed no threat in Destin. LSU won those two games by a combined 42 points.
The Tigers even managed to win a road ACC game at Boston College shooting 2-for-18 from three-point range in regulation. No one suggested the pre-conference path was brutal, but it was at least encouraging.
Then the SEC, with a little assist from the injury bug, punched LSU right between the eyes. Matt McMahon’s team lost its first four league games and seven of the first eight to all but end the McMahon era in Baton Rouge.
Two straight seasons LSU navigated a Charmin soft November-December before falling flat in the SEC.
Those days are over.
LSU may have struggles in the SEC, but those cruise control pre-conference slates are a thing of the past. Will Wade made sure of that immediately upon taking the job. In May, we learned Wade’s first team will play in Houston and Spokane against two of the winningest programs in college basketball. Here’s how Houston and Gonzaga stack up against the best programs in college basketball over five years.
Houston: 162 wins, 32.4 per season
Duke: 156 wins, 31.2 per season
UConn: 149 wins, 29.8 per season
Arizona: 148 wins, 29.6 per season
Gonzaga: 143 wins, 28.6 per season
Kansas: 130 wins, 26 per season
Only Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Rick Barnes and Bill Self have more career wins than Mark Few among active coaches. Tom Izzo and Kelvin Sampson are just behind. Sampson’s team has won 30 games in five straight seasons.
Wade doesn’t fear losing games like that in November. It bolsters metrics and provides an opportunity to get a big win. Plus, he believes he’ll have players good enough to win them.
That remains to be seen, but Tari Eason, Cam Thomas, Naz Reid and Trendon Watford all logged significant minutes in the NBA this season. He’s done it before.
The standards of LSU men’s basketball are lower than they are for football and baseball. That’s just the reality at this point. Folks well short of collecting Social Security recall a day when that wasn’t the case, so things change. Right now, the standard is low.
Games like Houston and Gonzaga bolster interest and create the opportunity for buy in. Think about john Brady’s 1999-2000 team thrashing Arizona by 26 on New Year’s Eve. That was a Sweet 16 squad. Wade’s second team beat Penny Hardaway and Memphis in November in the PMAC. That team also went to the Sweet 16.
Sadly, that was probably the marquee home game of the Wade era. Maybe the Houston in his first year, but the Cougars hadn’t made the tournament under Sampson yet.
The first step for Wade is getting these elite programs to schedule the Tigers anywhere.
The next step is getting them to Baton Rouge.
