LSU Basketball Slowly Improving NCAA Tournament Standing

LSU basketball continues to shoot up the rankings after a perfect week beating Mississippi State on the road and No. 16 Tennessee at home. It was the perfect and quite frankly only way the Tigers could dramatically improve their NCAA tournament standing.

After the weekend's latest slate of games, LSU has shot all the way up to No. 26 in the NET rankings, a strong indication it currently has a great chance at making it into March Madness. It's important to note that Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas still rank ahead of the purple and gold in the NET rankings but LSU has two more prime opportunities this week with a road game at Ole Miss followed by a home game with Auburn.

Furthermore, the two wins have propelled the program to a tie for second in the SEC race at 8-4 with Arkansas, a team LSU beat earlier this season. Every team is still chasing an Alabama squad that lost its first conference game to Missouri just over a week ago and is among the top 10 teams in the program.

The AP also released its updated top 25 poll on Monday and while the Tigers didn't make the cut, they did receive 16 votes after last week's performance. LSU under Will Wade has been in the top 25 each of the last two years at one point in the season. The Tigers spent three weeks in the top 25 during conferene play in 2020 and during its road to the Sweet Sixteen two seasons ago, the program was in the rankings for most of the season.

For Will Wade, the two wins last week were a welcomed sight. LSU had lost four of its previous five and while the teams it lost to were all tournament teams with the exception of Kentucky, it was still an opportunity lost.

"The thing about our resume is we don't have any bad losses," Wade said. "You gotta pick up quality wins and this was our third Quad 1 win of the year and that's certainly good and we'll have another chance here midweek. We've gotta keep building off of this, we've still got a lot of work to do and we've gotta finish strong."