LSU Basketball Gears Up For Busiest Portion of Non-Conference Schedule

LSU basketball coach Will Wade told reporters on Friday that the Tigers are "full steam ahead" after a contact tracing issue forced the program to pull out of its Hoopsgiving game with USF in Atlanta.

Wade said the players weren't affected by the contact tracing issues and that the team has been practicing in preparation for its busiest week of the non-conference schedule to date. The Tigers will play four games over an eight-day period starting on Dec. 14 with a Monday morning battle with Sam Houston State in the PMAC.

After having to cancel Saturday's game because of the contact tracing issues, Wade and the LSU administration moved quickly on a makeup game and Sam Houston State was available. The Tigers also have home games scheduled with UNO and North Texas next week as well and conclude the four-game stretch with VCU on Dec. 22.

There will be no fans permitted to the 11 a.m. tipoff on Monday but the program will be getting back what should be an integral piece to the 2020-21 team in forward Josh Leblanc.

Leblanc, who joined the team at the beginning of last season, was ruled ineligible by the NCAA until after the semester ended. With exams ending Saturday for the purple and gold, it means that Leblanc would be immediately eligible to play in Monday's game vs Sam Houston.

Wade has heaped praise on Leblanc ever since he originally transferred from Georgetown a year ago, specifically hyping up his defensive ability.

"He's long, he's physical and he can make some things happen on the defensive end," Wade said. "He rebounds the ball well and has some rim protection and just an all around very good player. He always is in the play but he's never in the way on offense which is very difficult to do. I think he'll be a helpful part of our team as we get him up and going."

It'll be interesting to see how Leblanc figures to work into the 10 man rotation that Wade has rolled out in the early going of the season. The Tigers have proven to be extremely deep this year with Shareef O'Neal, Charles Manning, Jalen Cook, Mwani Wilkinson and Eric Gaines all receiving significant playing time off the bench.

Leblanc is more of your prototypical three with the versatility to guard multiple positions, including guards and bigger forwards with his 6-foot-7, 230-pound frame. It's very plausible he eventually takes some of Aundre Hyatt's minutes, who's started in all but one game for the Tigers this season.

"I'd rather have too many players than not enough. That was the issue last year so it's much better to have the situation that we've got now," Wade said. "We'll work through that, it's gonna create some opportunity for some guys and do what's best for our team."

Manning is another story as the senior guard proved last year to be one of the Tigers premier perimeter defenders and shooters off the bench. He's still getting his feet wet as the Louisiana Tech game was the first action he's seen this season coming off a foot injury.

But Wade said that Manning practiced fully Wednesday and will continue to ramp up his in-game workload starting with next week's slate of games.

On the court, after knocking off Louisiana Tech 86-55 to improve to 3-1 on the season, Wade was disappointed in the offensive effort from his team. He said that the Tigers were shooting for somewhere between 95-100 points and that a big reason why the offense wasn't as smooth was because of poor spacing and screening.

"Our spacing and our screening caused us to turn the ball over too much," Wade said. "We were driving into tight areas and doing things that are very difficult even with as talented an offensive team as we are. We've gone about trying to fix that this week and I expect our spacing and screening to improve."

LSU's game on Monday against Sam Houston State will be available to watch on SEC Network. In the meantime, Wade and the Tigers are taking the next few days to really prepare for the busiest stretch of games they've had this season.

"It'll be fast and furious with four games in eight days and we want to continue to build on the momentum that we've had," Wade said.