LSU Basketball Focusing on Defensive Adjustments After Devastating SEC Loss to Vanderbilt

After LSU's "humbling" 99-90 loss to the SEC's last place team in Vanderbilt on Wednesday, coach Will Wade received texts from a few fellow Tiger coaches.

Baseball coach Paul Mainieri sent a text of encouragement, saying the year the Tigers won the College World Series in 2009, LSU lost one series in SEC play to Tennessee, a team that finished last place in the conference that year.

Gymnastics coach D-D Breaux sent a text to Wade as well with a very different message.

"I think it was something along the lines of what the hell happened," Wade said.

Breaux's reaction isn't very different than most who watched LSU-Vandy. For a team that had won 10 straight, 13 straight on the road in the SEC, the loss to the Commodores was stunning. The easy move for Wade and the team would be to flush the game and focus solely on No. 11 Auburn.

"No. It’s best to learn from it and figure it out," Wade said. "It’s not best to just move on. If you move on, the same thing will happen.”

Wade pointed to a number of issues that led to the Tigers first SEC loss of the season, none more important than their on ball defense on the perimeter. Of the 99 points Vandy scored, 40 came off of layups and an additional eight points were scored at the free throw line off of fouls on Commodore layup attempts.

That's half of Vanderbilt's points coming off of one major weakness LSU showed. Wade said some came off of the Commodores' ability to break the Tigers' press, but most just came off of guys getting beat off the dribble.

"I’m not going to go in great depth on this, but four of our five losses—last night being one of them—have the same deficiency defensively," Wade said. "At this rate whenever our last game of the year is, we’re going to get beat the same way. We’re going to give up a boat-load of points and we’re not going to be able to guard anybody off the bounce and our offense is not going to be able to bail anybody out."

Wade also pointed to a lack of focus throughout the night, but put that blame on him for not having the team as mentally ready as he initially thought. Now LSU must not only learn from its defensive deficiencies but also prepare for a top-15 Auburn team nearly impossible to beat on the road.

"We’re playing one of the best coaches, best teams in the league on the road," Wade said. "In my opinion it is the most hostile environment in the league. If we give them confidence offensively it’ll look like the last time we went there when we just got the doors blown off of us. If we don’t find something between now and Saturday at 11, it’ll be ugly.”

Auburn is currently on a five-game win streak, with victories over No. 15 Kentucky and Arkansas in the last week. Much like last year, Auburn is not one to shy away from the three ball, taking 576 on the season, which ranks second in the SEC.

While Auburn isn't shooting the three as efficiently this season, at only 30.9%, it's going up against an LSU team that has had a rough time defending the three, particularly in conference play. Out of 14 SEC teams, LSU ranks No. 13 in three-point defense, something Wade said needs to be much better if LSU wants a chance to win Saturday.

"They’re not shooting as well but they haven’t played us yet, haven't seen our bad three-point defense," Wade said. "They’re still shooting it, doing what they do. They do a good job drawing fouls. They have great spacing. They’ve got good shooters. They don’t have (Bryce) Brown like they had last year, (Jared) Harper and those sort of guys. Like I said, we have the No. 13 three-point defense in the SEC so they haven’t got a piece of us yet. They may be able to help their three-point percentage."

No. 18 LSU takes on No. 11 Auburn at 11 a.m. on Saturday and can be watched on ESPN.