LSU - Second Game, Same As The First

When I told the Tipster Wednesday morning that we would start the SEC stretch "oh and three," he pretty much told me I was crazy. Spouted off something like, "say bad things and bad things will happen." If only I had that power...

At any rate, LSU's performance against UConn combined with my thoughts about what I've seen from this Arkansas team so far – especially the last three games – led me to believe we were toast against LSU. If you want to remind yourself of my list of concerns and thoughts, go here.

The review of this game is simple. LSU executed the game plan we saw at Mississippi State and that we will continue to see the rest of the year. Attack the basket on the offensive end and create foul trouble, take advantage of our failures to get back on defense in transition, and play zone and slow the game down for stretches and force us to take and make three pointers. Brewer, Modica and the post players combined for 41 points (19 out of Hill and Townes – pretty good). The rest of the team scored 17 points (pretty bad).

On a "now I'm feeling even worse" note, I saw something last night that I quickly realized I'd seen in prior games but hadn't really thought that much about. While the usual "this team is not tough" and lack of court leadership was definitely on display, I also saw us get tired. We are not in good enough shape to play with the type of intensity we need over the course of the game. Brewer in particular was tired much of the time and played fairly "lazy" on offense much of the second half when LSU was in man defense (which they actually played quite a lot of). There's no sense in him playing 38 minutes if he is going to "coast" for half of them. (As a side note, he's nowhere near performing at "ready for the NBA" level right now. He wouldn't start ahead of Scotty Thurman.)

Modica had 7 points midway through the first half and never scored again while carding only three rebounds. He just disappeared. Our defense, except for maybe 10 minutes of the game, lacked intensity and many times was lazy. One steal. LSU had eight turnovers. There's the defensive story right there.

Townes actually showed up with a fairly strong 36 minutes, but played carefully on the defensive end and hurt us in the paint because he's just not a "banger." Hill's physical presence was greatly missed most of the game and his foul trouble also left him playing a bit carefully. We definitely lost the battle in the paint by a fairly large margin – both in scoring and rebounding. Suffice it to say we got nothing out of Charles Thomas and Vincent Hunter except about 30 seconds of great hustle. Nada, zip, why'd they dress out type nothing.

McCurdy provided quite the spark pushing the action, contributing four assists and one turnover while shooting 1-3 from three point land. His play actually brought LSU out of their zone and back into man defense (which led to us standing around in our motion offense). This guy needs to come into the game immediately when teams go to zone against us. In contrast, Dontell Jefferson and Eric Ferguson combined for five assists, five turnovers and only 10 points in a combined 53 minutes of play.

Besides the offensive (read: lack thereof) start to the second half, we had a stretch midway through where we had three consecutive turnovers on poor passes against a zone defense. We were so out of it during that time it was actually a bit sad to watch.

Coaching requires a much longer post. However, I'm going to watch a few more games before I comment much. Let's just say I'm not impressed with the "progress" that we've made over last year in being a "well coached team."

Band was uninspiring (the act is old), crowd dull with disappointment through much of the second half, and I still didn't have to sit in my real seats. Still there were times it was a very good crowd and quite loud, but the last few feeble attempts at calling the Hogs struggled to have any volume, much less enthusiasm.

On the way back to the parking lot I heard a guy having a fit about “...and no one's even mad! I'm mad...(yelling) AREN'T ANY OF YOU PEOPLE MAD?”

I stick by my prediction of oh and three.