LSU Basketball - Next Seasons Core: Ward, Reed, & Williams

We need to make some big moves in the portal. If not, we’re going to flounder-especially with Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC.

I don't think McMahon finishes next season if we see a repeat next year.

Ward needs to be a guy that gives you 15-20 mins off the bench next season

1) Givens
2) Williams

4) Reid

Need a starting 3 and 5, and 2 solid bench pieces to go with Robert Miller, Ward and Chest

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Woodward might've thought this was year 0.5

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Next year is year one of the rebuild

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Man, it’s disheartening enough. Everyone just stabbing daggers now. I didn’t want the season to end tonight. Still coping.

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I’m sad too. I just love LSU basketball man. Fell in love my first game I went to as a kid in the PMAC. Gonna be a long few months

I think this was the most disappointing thing tonight, the guys supposedly coming back played the worst. The guys leaving like Hannibal, Wright, Dean, played much better.

McMahon has a ton of work ahead of him in the portal. He really has to hit it out the park there. In my mind he needs 3 high quality players that can play starting/6th man minutes for next season. Hopefully he can find that if given 4-5 players to search for in the portal.

Also I really hope Chest is a player next season...although if he is I truly wonder why he got redshirted on a team like this in the first place. I understand its been said he kind of wanted to, but I'm not sure I completely buy into a player WANTING to redshirt and not play a whole season.

It can be done, Mizzou last year and Florida and Mississippi State this year were filled with portal guys. The question is can McMahon do it.

Williams is a quality freshman. Ward needs a competent distributor, but can certainly play a big role especially if we have the bigs for a good inside out game.
Reed…is frustrating. It feels like he should have been on those fast paced wade teams that exploited individual matchups. The guys got all the skills, unfortunately he has all the turnovers and brain farts as well.
I should note that there were times this year when Reed and ward had good chemistry together.
We don’t know what chest is until he’s on the court, same with miller, same with givens.

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Ward has some upside. I don't know what Reed does well. Every now and then he flashes but usually sticks out like a sore thumb.

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This is whats frustrating a bit about McMahon's teams is these 2 were his crown jewel high school recruits and neither has really panned out the way people thought they would by the end of year 2. Reed is as inconsistent as anyone, shows some great stuff but has so many games where he has like 5 points, 3 boards. Ward can absolutely rip it through the net from 3 at times but doesnt seem to do much outside of that and progressing fast enough as an overall player. When he's hot from 3 it's fun to watch, when he hits 1 or 2 3's in a night its kind of like, "well what else did we get from him?"

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Williams will develop into a nice player.

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I am not saying he is or isnt but its too early to really tell. He was forced to play a lot because we simply didnt have anyone to run our offense when Cook wasnt playing especially early on. Hannibal helped out later on but with Cook AND Stewart out we had to play Williams more than we probably should have. He might be a good player down the road, but I'm not sure. I could have sworn after his freshman year Brandon Murray would turn into a very good player and he just finished year 3 and didnt get on the floor very much over at Ole Miss, and his freshman year kind of blew away Williams' here. In the final 12 regular season conference games Williams had 3 assists. No, thats not a typo, Williams had THREE assists over 12 straight conference games to end the regular season. He had 4 games where he scored 10-16 points which isnt bad, but then in the 8 other games scored 6 or less as well. He simply has a ways to go.

We need to start tampering in the portal. Alabama and Mizzou pick up kids the day the portal opens? How tf