Why is this basketball team SO bad on the road?

They're over-performing this year. They were basically picked to be the worst in the SEC and go about 4-14. Inconsistency of course will be there. But, they did win at ARK and A&M.

No frontcourt depth and the team is soft.......by product of Johnny Jones. Slowly but surely Coach WW will get his team right, starting with this recruiting class.

I think the margin for error is not great with this team. We seem to compete for a while the one big run seems to snowball on us. At Bama we pulled within one 5 minutes into the second half then comes the run. Tennessee we pull within 5 with about 12 minutes left then the wheels come off. We're tied at 28 with Georgia yesterday with 5 minutes left in the half then over the next 8 minutes we're outscored 28-6.

We have some good road wins this year but it's been a while. I was disappointed we didn't compete better yesterday. Reath has been a shell of himself since he hurt his foot, but even at his best he was a liability defensively and right now he's giving us nothing offensively following 4 straight games where he scored in the 20's are more.

They’re horrible at offensive rebounding. It’s definitely something that drives Will Wade nuts. One problem is that although they practice offensive rebounding all the time, it’s just between themselves. Overall, we are undersized. They don’t practice against anyone with the physical attributes and skills of a player like Maten.
I think a lot of the problem is that our bigs were not developed properly under Jones. Wade has done a great job of improving the players he inherited, but he had little time to do it, and isn’t a miracle worker.
Also, Reath has been playing with an ankle injury for the past few games.

A big reason we lost yesterday was our free throw shooting. It was terrible. We’re really good usually. I think we’re inconsistent on the road in that regard.

It was the exact opposite to start the season

We shouldn't be disappointed when they (probably) end up in the NIT because they've exceeded expectations. NCAA teams should play in that tourney and we don't have the players to compete (consistently). It's like WW said, we have ~3 ways to win and other teams have ~5. I'd rather see us play several games in the NIT than 1&done in the NCAA. But LSU fans seem to be "all-in" or "all-out"...that's just the way it is and some things will never change!

It’s about match ups. LSU has slow, passive bigs and 2’&3’s that won’t go inside.

Length kills them.

quote:

---

It’s about match ups. LSU has slow, passive bigs and 2’&3’s that won’t go inside. Length kills them.

---

No question, makes our margin for error slim. We have a few teams this year, and on the road, where we those factors were very much in play.

But not when we go through an 8-minute stretch where we completely go brain dead and blow defensive assignments repeatedly and where done just that quickly.

Tough to overcome, we have to have that edge for 40 minutes, not 32 like yesterday.

quote:

---

ALWAYS WANT TO MAKE THE TOURNEY!!!!!!!!!!!

---

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see them in the NCAA tourney but I've accepted that we are just short by 1-2 bigs. WW can't seem to get 5 guys attacking the glass and that's the only way that we can keep the RB stats close. Otherwise, when we are not shooting well, we are in trouble. The more games we play, the more I'm seeing opposing coaches exploit our weakness. Take DR out of the game and we are much less effective. DR doesn't have the skills to dominate against any opponent or defense and you see what happens when he scores 1 point. I've always felt that Epps could have been an All-SEC 4 but he was allowed to play like a 3. If I look at the stats after a game without knowing the score, I could predict the outcome by looking at the RB's behind AE & DR. The outlier would be a 60% team stat on 3pt shooting. That won't happen consistently.

When we get 1 shot and the other teams gets 2-3, it's very hard to win consistently.

quote:

---

I've always felt that Epps could have been an All-SEC 4 but he was allowed to play like a 3

---

I don't see that, he is so thin and soft. He can't even block out on free throws, he has no behind to put on anyone they just leverage him out so easily. IMHO putting him at 4 and training him there would have been a round peg, square hole experiment and he'd have struggled to develop in that role.

I think Epps is playing right now where he can most help us, he's having to play inside on D out of necessity and he's terribly overmatched physically. I don't question his effort, he gets more offensive boards for us than anyone. He just has defensive issues wherever you put him, 3 or 4.