Woodward’s outlier: LSU men’s hoops’ underachievement

BY HENRY HUBER @HenryHuber_

LSU athletic director Scott Woodward has made a lot of big moves since the start of 2021, replacing head coaches in women’s basketball, baseball, football and men’s basketball all within a span of a year.

So far, most of those changes have paid off in a big way.

Kim Mulkey quickly turned a women’s basketball program that hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament in three seasons into a championship contender.

Jay Johnson grabbed the torch from legendary baseball coach Paul Mainieri, prospered and currently headlines the No. 1 team in college baseball.

In just his first season, Brian Kelly took a football team that bordered on bowl ineligibility in the two seasons prior and turned it into one that was just two wins away from a spot in the College Football Playoff.

While there’s still time for each move to cascade, the opposite is appearing to occur, with expectations in all three programs currently being higher than ever.

But in completing the superfecta and reinvigorating four of LSU’s biggest sports programs, one pillar appears to be falling short, eroding an all-but-perfect foundation assembled by Woodward. That is the men’s basketball program under head coach Matt McMahon.

Lead-up to disappointment

Now, none of the head coach-

FINAL FOUR, from page 11 14-0 in conference play. However, LSU fell in the SEC Tournament to Tennessee, the same team it lost to this season.

LSU entered the NCAA Tournament that year as a No. 2 seed, narrowly missing out on being a one-seed after losing in the SEC Tournament.

That’s a fate LSU looks to have suffered this year as well. The Tigers were on the fringes of being a No. 1 seed for much of the latter half of the season, but the loss to Tennessee all but ended that possibility.

This year, LSU is currently projected as a three-seed, still allowing it to host its first two games. That was the situation LSU was in last season, where it narrowly avoided an upset versus Jackson State in the first round before losing to Ohio State in the Round of 32.

Despite only being a year removed, LSU has almost completely reshaped its roster since last year. The Tigers only returned one real key player from that run, LSU’s current secondleading scorer Alexis Morris.

With that said, last year doesn’t necessarily serve as a good predictive measure for this year’s team. However, it’s possible that LSU will be faced with similar matchups to last year to es listed ahead of McMahon had perfect first seasons.

Mulkey’s squad was upset in both its SEC quarterfinal matchup against Kentucky and Round of 32 matchup against Ohio State, concluding an impressive season in disappointing fashion. Johnson suffered similar postseason woes and fell two runs short of a super-regional. Kelly went from at least a Sugar Bowl projection to not making a BCS bowl, with the worst of its collapse coming in a two-score loss to 5-7 Texas A&M.

Those three outcomes were disappointing. But discounting them in any way would be ignoring the obvious.

Each coach not only showed flashes of potential but also beat out their preseason projections. LSU baseball finished one spot ahead of most SEC West projections and women’s basketball finished ahead of Tennessee when predictions stated otherwise heading into the season.

Those examples of surpassing expectations may be minor at face value, but there are multiple considerations that make them more impressive.

For one, the SEC turned out to be the deepest conference in baseball, and LSU still managed to place third in the West ahead of College World Series representatives in Auburn and Ole Miss. And because she had already won three championships during her time with Baylor, expectations for Mulkey were already tremendously high.

With two coaches already ex- ceeding decent-to-high expectations, imagine the ecstasy of the LSU fanbase when LSU football went from being projected to finish at-or-near the bottom of the SEC West to earning its crown.

Directly corresponding with that was the supposed rise of LSU men’s basketball, which attained a top 10 win just a few days before Kelly secured his tenth win in the Citrus Bowl. Nobody knew that the end of 2022 would cap off LSU sports’ most recent and balanced pinnacle.

Transition to Anguish

After an ugly end to the Will Wade era of LSU men’s basketball, former Murray State head coach McMahon was granted the impossible task of building a respectable SEC squad from scratch in under eight months. Hearing that, you probably wonder how we could be hard on him given the hopelessness of the description.

While patience is warranted here and comparing McMahon’s situation to the aforementioned game and 15.5 rebounds per game. Both of those numbers are more points and rebounds than either Augustus or Fowles averaged over the course of one season. isn’t entirely fair, there is a scenario where that patience becomes exhausted. That comes when early promise is followed by a lack of progression—a short but accurate description of this season of LSU men’s basketball. Following a miraculous offseason, where McMahon kept star guard Adam Miller from transferring and surrounded him with experienced transfers and promising prospects, the pro - see OUTLIER, page 14 was LSU’s second leading scorer that season, and put up similar numbers to Morris, averaging 14.4 points, 3.3 assists and 2.6 rebounds per game. start the tournament.

That doesn’t automatically mean that Reese is a better player than either of the two, but her production is that of an Augustus or Fowles-level player. The big difference, though, is that unlike LSU in 2005 and 2006, it doesn’t have two players of that caliber like those teams did.

The aforementioned Morris is LSU’s next most productive player after Reese, averaging 15.1 points, 4.2 assists and three rebounds per game. Individual star quality isn’t the only factor in making a deep tournament run, but with LSU, that’s been the case in all five of its Final Four runs.

When looking at the personnel and individual production, the 2008 team once again stands out as the most similar of the Final Four teams to this year.

One key difference, though, was the strength of schedule of the 2008 team compared to this year. LSU has received its fair share of criticism this season for its weak nonconference schedule. The lack of quality wins is also a major reason why LSU is only projected as a No. 3 seed.

In 2008, LSU played three top 10 ranked teams during nonconference play while also securing a win over then No. 1 Tennessee in conference play.

Though that schedule resulted in a couple more losses for the Tigers, it improved their resume and helped prepare them for big games in the postseason.

That experience is something LSU lacks this season, as the Tigers have only played two ranked teams all year, and one of those games was a 24-point loss to No. 1 South Carolina.

When looking at LSU’s Final Four teams, all of which come between 2004 and 2008, there are a couple key similarities in the makeup of the teams.

In that time where LSU made it to the Final Four in five straight seasons, each of those teams featured either Sylvia Fowles or Seimone Augustus, true superstars who could will their teams to big wins.

This year’s LSU team features superstar Angel Reese who currently averages 23.4 points per

In 2008, Augustus was gone, but Fowles was in her senior season and averaged 17.4 points per game and 10.3 rebounds per game. She was LSU’s leading producer, and played a similar style to how Reese plays for LSU now.

When looking at production outside of Fowles, the similarities continue. Quianna Chaney

The NCAA Tournament is impossible to predict, the similarities between this year’s team and other successful LSU teams are there. After a semifinal exit in the SEC Tournament, the Tigers now await their fate as the 2023 NCAA Tournament bracket will be announced at 7 p.m. Sunday on ESPN.