re: Sad that Waters is playing himself out of the lineup..

Scoreless in the 1st half,the came out and scored 5 real quick but it seemed he forced everything after that.I don't wanna give bama a lot of credit but their defense was solid

I think it is more that he has hit the wall so to speak. He isn't that strong of a guy and his legs are tired, leaving his shots short and drives not as sharp. Another full off season of strength and conditioning may be all he needs to be A.I. 2.0 for a full season. Definitely not ready for the NBA now which is a good thing for the program building to next year.

The main thing Waters needs is a teammate that is so good they double and triple team him rather than Walters. Unfortunately I think the double teaming has made him lose some confidence so that on the few occasions he does have a good opening he is not making them like he did before.

Also all of the other guards are still benefitting from him being on the floor. How do you think they get open for 3's? So it is a little early to be so down on one of the best players to ever put on an LSU basketball jersey.

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He looks fatigued in his upper body. Release point looks a bit lower and shots are hitting iron.

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I've seen plenty of freshman that ball deep into post-season, so I'm not buying the freshman wall thing.

Waters is just beat up and it was inevitable as often as he drives the ball to the basket. He has a very slight build and has been beaten up on all season. He needs to gain some weight and strength to play the game he plays. All the really good point guards have some stockiness to them so they can take the pounding when they take the ball inside.

Water is no different than almost every other freshman point guard, look at Trae Young for Oklahoma. His play has dropped off significantly the last few weeks after looking like the player of the year for more than half of the season.

The good thing is, he will probably 10-15 pounds by next year and will get allot stronger. Plus he will have much more help with the incoming freshmen and the improvement of our returning players. He won't have to have as much of a load on him as he does this year.

Waters shooting has declined and there are a lot of reasons for his overall dip. First off our entire offense has changed, we’ve started throwing it into the post a lot more often than the beginning of the season. Reath had more postups going into last game than he did all of last season by a wide margin. Lineup changes have also hurt him, since Sims has been replaced by Epps in the lineup Waters attempts have been nearly cut in half. The floor has become more congested and given him less room to operate and play the way he’s most comfortable. Also replacing Sampson with Edwards has taken one of our only guys who can create his own offense off of the floor and allowed defenses to focus on Waters more. Overall Wades decision to sacrafice offense in order to improve our defense has hurt Waters numbers. Go back and watch the Maui of any of our non conf matchups vs the better teams to compare and you’ll see that early on we were much more spread and free offensively giving Waters a better space to operate in. Our offense was much better before Wade decided to put Sampson in the doghouse and have Waters on a very short leash.

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Mays is killing it.

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Don't sleep on Edwards. He's been steadily contributing more as the year goes on. He's been our most consistent 3-point shooter and has had more and more success putting the ball on the floor.

Bobby Knight would also love him as he uses the ball fake constantly.

And I'll give Mays this, even last year.. he IMHO was the only kid on the team who consistently busted it last year. He always plays with energy and effort, though sometimes misguided and not thought out very well. He has cut down considerably on the kamikaze drives the basket the last 3 games and is playing smarter, the result is more efficient play.

Flush Bama man they are just to big and physical for us. Look what they did to Tennessee the game before and everyone thought they were the hottest team in the conference before that.

We can compete with Mizzou so let's focus on that game, it would be a good Top-50 win and it's doable.