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In NCAA Tournament loss, LSU without Will Wade looked a lot like it did with him
By Les East
Published:
LSU went into its NCAA Tournament opener Friday night with a new head coach.
The 6th-seeded Tigers had been rocked by the sudden firing of head coach Will Wade (and associate head coach Bill Armstrong) 6 days earlier.
In rapid-fire succession, LSU then learned that assistant coach Kevin Nickelberry would be the team’s interim head coach and that they would be playing 11th-seeded Iowa State.
It was difficult to anticipate how the Tigers would perform and it wasn’t surprising that they got off to a shaky start in the Midwest Region in Milwaukee.
They trailed by 5 points after a terrible first half, pulled even early in the second half, fell behind again and kept fighting and fighting before ultimately succumbing 59-54 to a Cyclones team that had lost their previous 3 games, including a 72-41 loss to Texas Tech in their Big 12 tournament opener 8 days earlier.
It’s easy to blame LSU’s loss to an underdog, though a pretty good team, on the disruption caused by Wade’s firing for cause after the NCAA levied a bunch of serious allegations against him and the program last week.
But it’s harder to find evidence that the Tigers’ shortcomings were any different than ones they had shown while Wade was coaching them.
They struggled on offense, scoring just 19 points in the first half and saving their most consistent scoring for a futile stretch run.
The Tigers were limited on offense from the time Adam Miller suffered a season-ending injury in the preseason. They were limited in their 1-on-1 ability and 3-point shooting, a problem that was exacerbated Friday by Iowa State’s very good defense.
Ball security also contributed to the Tigers’ offensive problems. It was especially bad when starting point guard Xavier Pinson missed 5 games and was limited in several others during the SEC season after spraining a knee.
Pinson was close to healthy down the stretch, but he committed 5 of LSU’s damaging 19 turnovers against Iowa State.
The Tigers, especially leading scorer Tari Eason, had a bad habit of getting in foul trouble throughout the season. At times that meant a disparity in free-throw attempts and, more important, it limited playing time for key players such as Eason and starting center Efton Reid, both of whom had 2 fouls before Friday’s game was 8 minutes old.
Eason committed his 4th foul with more than 11 minutes remaining, but never fouled out and led LSU with 18 points, almost single-handedly keeping his team within striking distance late.
But limited playing time and understandable cautiousness while playing in foul trouble prevented the SEC Sixth Man of the Year from having an even bigger impact Friday and throughout the season.
Nickelberry’s Tigers didn’t appear appreciably different from Wade’s Tigers – and that’s neither a criticism nor a compliment, just an observation.
LSU on Friday night was what it had been on balance this season – a periodically exceptional and mostly very good defensive team that oftentimes was good enough to overcome its offensive shortcomings but not often enough to be more than it was – a .500 team in SEC play (including a 1-1 mark in the SEC tournament) that was one and done in the NCAA Tournament.
“I said all week that this was just basketball,” Nickelberry said afterward, “but the distractions were a lot.”
The Tigers trailed by 5 at halftime but seemed more energetic to start the second half. They pulled even at 31 only to see the Cyclones open an 11-point lead.
LSU got as close as 1 point and climbed within 2 on 3 other occasions but could never catch up again.
Perhaps the presence of Wade – and the absence of the challenging adjustment caused by his firing – would have been enough to turn this narrow defeat into a narrow victory for the Tigers.
But the team he left behind looked a lot like the one he assembled.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
