LSU Working to Dig Itself Out of SEC Hole, Refine Two Key Issues

Will Wade can get a little sigh of relief out of knowing for the first time in more than a month, LSU is as healthy as can be entering an important stretch of SEC basketball.

The Tigers put forth their best all around effort against Texas A&M earlier this week and now are set to welcome a Mississippi State team that's played a number of SEC programs like Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee close in recent weeks. But while things are looking up on the injury front, there are still some very bothersome issues this program is hard at work trying to get under control.

Wade was pleased with how the offense and defense looked throughout the course of the Texas A&M game if it weren't for two glaringly bad stats, one on either side of the ball. The first were the 22 turnovers the team gave up on offense and the second was the 22 offensive rebounds surrendered on defense.

LSU has coughed the ball up nearly 18 times a game in conference play for a total of 183 which Wade said is astounding the team has won any games with that many turnovers.

"We're getting stronger with the ball but we haven't gotten much better with our decision making," Wade said. "Earlier we were weak with our pivoting and I've seen some real improvement there but now we gotta clean up our decision making."

"We moved the ball a lot better, the ball didn't stick as much. It was our highest assist game in a couple of weeks. We took better shots, all that stuff is a byproduct of putting the defense in rotation and keep them rotating. We've had problems getting them in rotation and we could search out the better shot."

The other half of what Wade and LSU are really working on is defensive rebounding, with Wade expecting to have a study finished Friday afternoon on why the team has been so poor since conference play. Heading into conference play LSU was in the top 60 or so teams in defensive rebounding but have since plummeted to 225th in the country.

LSU is now allowing 9.5 offensive rebounds per game to opposing teams according to Team Rankings and it's become an area where this group simply must improve to consistently win games.

"I've been harping on it," Wade said. "We've gotta get that corrected, that is a plummet. Our offensive rebounding even in the last week has dropped in the league."

Auburn and Kentucky have distanced from the rest of the SEC pack but LSU is still very much control of its own destiny with seven games to go. The Tigers No. 1 goal every season is to earn the double bye in the SEC tournament at the least, ensuring at last one more Quadrant 1 opportunity before the NCAA tournament.

At 5-6 and a plethora of teams in that 8-3 to 5-6 mark, how the Tigers close these final seven games out will be critical to earning that double bye. Starting with another team in that 5-6 threshold Saturday in Mississippi State, Wade and LSU understand how important this one is.

"Teams are gonna beat each other up, that's the way it's gonna work," Wade said. "There's gonna be a cluster of teams between 8-10 and 10-8 and so digging out as many away as you can. This is a huge game for us because you can't keep giving them away at home and expect to come out with a winning record."