It’s been a tough stretch for head coach Will Wade’s LSU Tigers as of late. Dropping five of their last six games, including a devastating loss to an inferior Ole Miss group Tuesday, it hasn’t been pretty for the Bayou Bengals.
Down starting guard and floor general Xavier Pinson, this offense has struggled to get into a rhythm without him in the rotation. Despite the inconsistency and losing skid, Wade believes in the foundation this unit has set and how correctable their mistakes are, especially when healthy.
“I still believe in this team,” Wade said. “We’ve got a good team. Our margins are razor thin, particularly without Pinson at full strength, but we still got a good group. We will find a way to make this a good year but we've got a good group, we got a good foundation, and we got to get back to work and we've got to increase those margins a little bit.”
Keeping the team morale up has been important for Wade. With a lack of upperclassmen on this squad, this group has matured early, even with freshman Justice Williams stepping up when needed.
Reclassifying and skipping his senior year of high school to suit up for the purple and gold, his development has come a long way since arriving to campus, something Wade is extremely proud of.
“I thought Justice played really well [against Ole Miss] too,” Wade said. “He did a nice job for us. We’ve just got to be better. He's getting better.”
In such a talented SEC, it’s a given there would be a few bumps along the road, and as Pinson continues his rehab to get to full strength, there is light at the end of the tunnel for the Tigers.
With a handful of winnable games over the next few weeks, Wade is hoping to capitalize and have his reenergized group take out their aggression on the court. Putting their heads down and working to get back to the LSU standard of basketball is their No. 1 priority.
“We're not happy. They're not happy,” Wade said. “But I mean, everybody's going to count us out. And we’ve got to go to work and do good work. You have to do great work when the chips are down and that's what we're going to do. It’s a difficult spot, probably not a spot we thought we'd be at probably a month ago, but we're going to figure it out.”
A major point of emphasis to recover from this stretch is playing smart with the basketball and not forcing passes that result in turnovers. It’s correctable mistakes with such a young, inexperienced team and Wade knows that growing pains are a given, but shaking back and learning from their mistakes is what will get them to that next gear.
Against Ole Miss, it was evident there is still a tremendous amount of room for improvement when it comes to handling the rock.
“We just get worn down,” Wade said. “We made some really poor decisions in transition down the stretch and the turnover against the zone where we tried to split it. We had guys out there too long and they just got tired and when you're tired your decision making goes down, so we've got to certainly get that under control.”
The confidence in his talented group hasn’t wavered through this stretch of games. Keeping their heads high and pushing to overcome adversity is what’ll make them such a force come March. With winnable games coming up, the Tigers have the utmost confidence that they will recover from this.
“We're going to figure it out. I believe in his group,” Wade said.“I believe in the guys we got in there. Good leadership. I still told you guys a month ago we're built on a solid foundation. We're still on the same solid foundation. We just got very, very thin margins when you're playing in a tough league like this.”
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