1989-1990 LSU Basketball: What do you remember the problem being?

Probably because our best 3 players were 2 freshmen and a sophmore in a completely different era of college basketball. Most players stayed until they were juniors which meant other teams had more experience than us. With the exception of the fab 5 most young teams didn't do great things.

Dale was a sub par x's & o's coach

Same as football now, coach was an incredible recruiter, ambassador and media darling but a retardo game coach. He might as well have been playing Mario brothers once game time started

There were egos, and they were pretty big. Dale couldn't keep them in check.

The team was young, at least the big names were, but they really lost to some teams, like Auburn that year, that had absolutely no business being anywhere close to us.

So when it came time to seeding we had to play Ga. Tech in the second round instead of a 6 or 7 see like we should have been.

They had a very poor head coach when it came to disciplining the team. He was a good recruiter, and he was an underrated in-game coach, but the lack of discipline caused them to be a huck-and-chuck team. Give that team to Rick Pitino, and they would have been a serious threat to win it all.

That team gets too much grief. I understand completely about the 1992 Fab Five and what Kentucky has done of late. Still, CJ was a soph (and not really the world's best "team player"),Shaquille was a freshman and Roberts was a Prop 48 first yr player who had been virtually dormant for a year.

With that said it was inexcusable for that squad not to have won the SEC Title. That was Georgia and Alec Kessler's big year. Georgia won late in Baton Rouge and came from 17 down at halftime in Athens to beat LSU.Either one of those resulting in an LSU win would have given LSU a share.

If that wasn't enough, the next game after Georgia was an ESPN game in Gainesville. Remember,this was a long time before virtually every game was televised. This was put together back in the summer to feature Florida's Livingston Chatman and Dewayne Schintzius. Florida had just won its first SEC title the prior year.But in October of 1989 Florida coach Norm Sloan was fired over NCAA allegations. Recently fired former Tennessee coach Don DeVoe was chosen as 'interim coach.'A "player's coach" to a Bob Knight protege'.Chatman and Schintzius quit in early January for failing to comply with some of DeVoe's requests.

Okay,the point--? Well, around mid-January Florida was fielding a virtual intramural team. LSU started out ahead 14-4 and Dick Vitale was talking about an "M&M - er" and how this was going to be bad. Florida caught up and led at halftime. They actually increased their lead to 63-39 at one point before a run made the final margin more 'acceptable.'

In my opinion, including 1/9/12, this was the most embarrassing performance in LSU history. A team that had been ranked as high as #2 being beaten soundly by a team that was just trying to finish the season.

Still, the "NC or bust" predictions were crazy. Remember the Georgia Tech team that eliminated us went on to the Final Four. Of course that regional was played in the Superdome, where had LSU beaten Tech,they very well would have gone to the FF.

JFP