re: What happened to the men's basketball team the last 2 games?

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I saw the energy, not sure how we watched the same game and came up 180-degrees apart on that, but having watched Johnny's teams the last few years I can definitely see an much higher energy and effort level this year. We actually created several turnovers through hustle and effort in trimming the lead the first half of the second half.

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In general LSU has played hard. Last night wasn't one of those games. Where intensity really manifests itself is on defense and 50/50 balls. That said, Tennessee beat LSU to many of the 50/50 balls (though not nearly as much as Auburn did) and scorched LSU on offense with countless open looks. LSU looked a step slow and hesitant all night. They didn't close out hard to any of the shooters. Tenn. shot 54% overall and 48% from three. That doesn't happen when guys are harassing shooters. Part of that was UT executed well when LSU tried to play zone. But, it only took a couple of passes to get LSU completely out of sorts and someone was always hesitant or lacking to recover. Even the announcers noted LSU looked a step slow.

Compare that with UT players who were constantly in the faces of LSU players when the Tigers were on offense. There was passion from the guys in orange. There wasn't much from the guys in purple.

Right now Onwassar and Reath are the only guys really showing fight. Others kind of seem to be going through the motions. Maybe the most glaring example of that happened at Auburn. On an LSU break Waters threw a cross-court pass that was intercepted by AU. After doing so he stopped, hung his head, and turned to slowly jog back on defense. In the process, the Auburn players blew by him for an easy dunk.

Maybe the grind has gotten to them. But the body language looks like the team is beat down. Even Wade wasn't his usual emotional self last night.