re: Basketball beats Nicholls 74-62 - Game Notes

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Wade doesn’t recruit true PG because he likes to have two combo guards. Do you not understand that is by design?

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I understand everything perfectly fine. I dont think anyone understands what you meant calling wade's offense "guard heavy" when literally just 2 seasons ago we had 3 bigs in our Top 5 scorers. Yes, just about every team in the country has ball handling offense initiating guards, that's kind of just basketball in general. Doesnt mean anything about being guard heavy/guard reliant.

People would equate guard heavy/guard reliant teams to those who barely have any bigs do anything of significance offensively. Which really hasn't been much of the case with Wade here. We always have at least 1 big contribute hugely to the offense and most of the time 2.

Pinson is a career 39fg 33 3pt in 3 years conference play

He needs a huge leap to be the guy you think he is

Days is a good shooter.

No one else on the team has proven anything in that area.

Lester what are your predictions for this year's team then without Miller.

I was at the exhibition game Saturday. This team will get it down down low.

WE may be as good as anyone in the SEC with our front court.

You heard it here first

Days
Reid
Eason.

believe me when I tell you that Pinson will have an excellent season from the PG position.

Brandon Murray, Mwani, Gaines, and Justice will give us depth at the shooting guard position and Gaines will spell Pinson.

This team will still have an opporunity to make a solid run.

They will shoot free throws extremely well and will be as good on the block as anyone in the SEC>

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completely overlooking everything else said in the post where I answered your questions of giving you impact players and stats to support the likelihood of this offense still being good.

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Scoring 70 in a scrimmage against Nicholls means absolutely nothing to me dude.

Days & Reid will be reliant on others to create shots, outside of put backs & such. Do I think they can hit double digits? Sure. That doesn’t really tell me anything though

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Wade doesn’t recruit true PG because he likes to have two combo guards.

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I guess the question is what do you consider to be a "true PG"? He went hard after Wheeler (Georgia) in the transfer portal...who led the SEC in assists by a wide margin last season. He recruited JD Davidson and TyTy Washington hard. Both are PG's. Waters was a true PG.

I think Wade likes players, not necessarily player that fit into specific boxes. And really, before Miller this season he's only had 2 SGs in his time at LSU. Mays for 3 years who moved to SG only because Waters was here for two years, and Thomas...who was far from a "combo guard". He was a pure scorer with no desire to facilitate whatsoever. I think the approach this year was get the players you can get, then adapt from there.

Miller was going to be a big part of the team this season. NO ONE denies that. But his loss doesn't mean LSU can't adapt.

It was ONE exhibition game with three starters out. Thus, Saturday was hardly a great precursor of what to expect. But, despite playing without Miller, LSU's second team still shot 46%. You constantly gripped about LSU not sharing the ball enough last season. Yet, on Saturday they assisted on 56% of their made baskets (compare that to last season when they ranked as one of the lowest in the country in that category at 42%). They did what Wade teams do...made more FT's than the opponent takes (17-15). They grabbed 38% of the potential offensive rebounds. The nation's leader in that category averaged 40% last season. The ONLY reason they didn't score 80+ is because they turned the ball over 17 times which obviously led to less shots (i.e. opportunities for made baskets)

Will those trends hold? Who knows? But it is likely LSU will have to find different ways to win than maybe they were expecting. Just because Miller is out doesn't mean the season is lost. Eason was as efficient as advertised. IF, he can show some consistency from 3, then your frontcourt could be Eason, Days, Reid. Eason and Days could be a dominant rebounding duo which could dovetail LSU's offensive approach to being one more like 18-19 than the last two years. That 18-19 team was bad from 3...but they were still an efficient offense because they killed teams on the offensive glass. Much of the offensive strategy for that team was just to get the ball on the glass to either make it or let the the offensive rebounders attack. Hell, that team really took off when they moved Naz inside rather than allowing him to be a 6'10" inconsistent 3 point shooter.

Gaines appears to have shown what we already knew about him. There are brilliant flashes of great vision and ability, mixed, unfortunately, with a lot of reckless play. Let's wait to see if Wade can reign some of that in as the year goes on like he did with Smart.

The last two seasons LSU was probably more guard heavy...but that was because the two guard were the top offensive players on the team. This year's group might be more physical and bigger than year's past. So you may see a team that doesn't shoot it all that well from three (both in % and volume). But one that wants to constantly attack the rim and shoot a bunch of FTs. If the point totals are their AND the defense/defensive rebounding vastly improves, then it really won't matter how they get it done...just that they are getting it done.

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Scoring 70 in a scrimmage against Nicholls means absolutely nothing to me dude.

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74*

And while I'm certainly not trying to hype up that in general, you have to be pretty impressed with Miller, Days, Reid, Pinson, Williams and Ezewiro all not playing and us putting up 74 with 6 scholarship players available, some of which are end of bench guys. That's 3 sophomores and 3 freshmen available to us among the scholarship guys. Nicholls is not a total pushover either, went 18-7 and won the Southland last year.

I mean we had 4 guys play at least 36 minutes, that absolutely sucks

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Are there any highlights of this game besides the Fudge dunk?

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No. Their assigned digital media guy was at the game; but they didn't put together any kind of highlights video or anything. At least not that has been put out yet; so I'm assuming they won't.

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who lied to you about Miller being the best player on the team???

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Who do you think it was going to be?

Honestly impossible to even know at this point who the best player on the team would be. I think Miller had a good shot though personally...but I also dont know if we have far and away a player above everyone else either this season, even with Miller.

There's just a ton of new faces and it's hard to know exactly how everyone will step up in the end. It's like that for a lot of teams too, just a ton of turnover in basketball, especially in SEC in general.

Who knows if Reid will be an 8ppg guy or a 16ppg guy really. Does Wilkinson's offensive role increase substantially where he's almost a double digit a game guy potentially? Is Pinson's output similar to that of Mizzou? Just a ton of questions we wont really know anything about till we all get on the court and watch them play.

I wanted to see what pinson could do in a less demanding role. I think some of his better games were when Dru Smith was the guy and he was able to do more off the ball. I think Gaines will be the x factor