Southofsouth is playing electric banjo in a bluegrass quintet with zee dustin, tiger todd, walter mccarty and the boat while john treloar, chad dollar and saul smith sing fifty ways to leave your lover and asked me to whip this up real quick...

the Tigers travel to Lexington to take on a Kentucky team that continues to get better. they suffered a tough home loss to florida last saturday but rebounded with a thorough road win at ole miss. On the night of the ice storm, LSU was able to catch UK off guard with their zone and pressure, but the cats should be much more prepared this time around. LSU also can not bank on julius randle having another clunker of a game.

Randle is UK's best player and one of the best in the sport this year. he leads them in scoring and rebounding and should be hungry for some personal redemption after getting bottled up by johnny o'bryant, jordan mickey and jarell martin last meeting. James young and dakari johnson were the two players that really played well last time. young hit several shots to keep the cats within shouting distance and johnson made his presence felt in the post at times.

if randle plays like he is capable of and the harrison twins show up, not to mention contributions from 'veterans' willie cauley-stein and alex poythress, LSU is going to have to play a nearly flawless game in rupp arena to come away with a win. the Tigers' tournament hopes are basically on life support and a road win tomorrow would be enormous in terms of reviving their chances of an at large berth.

i wouldn't expect to see as much zone, but perhaps we could see more pressure out of dead ball situations. i do think they will play zone but at this point, they may as well take their lumps in man to man because this team just can not defend its own shadow for the most part.

johnny o'bryant must stay out of foul trouble and when the cats are able to penetrate mickey and martin must be ready to pounce. protecting the rim helped boost our team so much last time. if LSU can force some turnovers and at least contain UK on the perimeter from a shooting standpoint, they can score enough to give themselves a chance. LSU must rebound the ball as best they can. this is where the zone can hurt us again especially with those famous long rebounds of the rims in rupp.

anthony hickey is going home again and has a history of playing well against kentucky. we NEED our veterans, JOB III, hickey and stringer and coleman to show up. when at least 3 of those guys are on, we are tough to beat. jarell martin is coming off a very good game and if he and mickey can produce with those veterans playing well then we have a really good chance, and that is the type of team we would like to see more often.

hopefully the tigers keep it close, uk starts to press and gets distorted and settles for jumpers (9th in the league in 3pt %, 1st in total fg%). if we rebound, run and score off those misses it will give us the chance that we need as far as getting easy points on the board. these are statistically the 2 best rebounding teams in the league. LSU will need to gang rebound, (gasp) box out, and commit to crashing the boards because that half arse effort we have come to see away from home is just not going to cut it tomorrow.

prediction-

LSU 72
Kentucky 83

hopefully we play our best game of the season. that's probably what it will take.

This post was edited on 2/22/14 at 5:27 pm