re: Basketball ends SEC stretch 9-9 or 10-8 ?

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It has been a long season. We had a lot of new players and it’s a grind. When the going got tough the team kept grinding away and upset done teams. They appear to be building a foundation for the future.

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You had 8 new players this season. The problem is you will likely have almost (maybe as many) new players next year. Four guys are definitely gone (Wright, Baker, Dean, Hannibal). The average number of transfers OUT in the SEC (and most major conferences) over the last 2-3 years is about 3-4 players per year. Hopefully McMahon can kind of buck the average and retain more than most teams. But it's not unreasonable to think LSU could have anywhere from 6-8 new players new players next season. That's becoming more of the norm in college basketball.

A solid finish would give the PROGRAM some momentum going into the offseason and much more to "sell" to potential transfers/recruits than they had at the same point last season. But it's still likely going to be a significantly new team (maybe more than 50% of the roster being new). Fair or not, that means coaches don't get much of an excuse anymore for having "a lot of new players", because almost all of them have "a lot of new players"