Wade's defensive numbers through 2 games

Southeastern will drop long range bombs again tonight. Remember Parker Edwards? (Now a member of LSU’s team)

Bo coaching basketball this year too ?

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That's not an excuse, just an example of a good game plan by Travis Ford.

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I get exactly what you're saying. I think the rebuttal would be why wasn't there some sort of an adjustment made to that plan?

If that's explanation and the thought is to stay with the plan to get more reps with it in attempt to better later in the season, that's fine. It just needs to work down the stretch.

SIUE shot slightly worse from 3 against the pharmacy college than they did us lmao

The only hope at this point is Leblanc (who was an excellent defender at Georgetown) and Manning (who showed some good defensive traits last season) can make a big difference on their own because clearly Wade and his staff either don't prioritize defense or take an approach that simply doesn't work.

For all of the talk during the offseason about making defense THE priority, LSU came out in the first two games and looked EVERY BIT AS BAD defensively as they were last season. Literally, no change whatsoever. SIUE is a bad team and St. Louis, while a very good team, isn't known for their offense. LSU made both look like top notch offensive programs.

All it takes is a small amount of ball movement vs. LSU to get a wide open shot. Plus, this team does some of the most fundamentally stupid things I've ever seen on defense. There are times they press after a made basket, do a good job of setting a trap, only to have one of the trapping players inexplicably leave his feet, allowing an outlet pass and the offense to be off to the races for an easy bucket. Or, there are times they are in good position...only for a player to unnecessarily run AWAY from a shooter to try to close of a drive that is already well defended. That, and they are just generally lackadaisical overall on the defensive end. They rarely hedge or close out hard. They half-assed trail cutters, etc. And finally, they run the stupid 1-3-1 trap which, while it creates a steal here and there, often leads to 5 wide open shots for every turnover it gets.

I love Wade. But this isn't a personnel problem. It is a philosophy/approach problem. His defenses have been poor every year at LSU. Yes, including the 18-19 team which was ranked 8th in the SEC in defensive efficiency and would have been just as bad and in some cases worse relative to other power conferences (Big 12, Big 10, ACC). The only thing that made the 18-19 defense even workable (with LSU's great offense) is Waters's ability to create turnovers. LSU was a top 10 team that year in steals per possession. Last season LSU couldn't create the turnovers (ranked 304 in turnovers forced per possession) to mitigate the otherwise terrible shooting defense. Plus, I think Wade is too tied to the analytics that say defense without fouling is a "winning" stat. While true, not fouling because you refuse to closely guard anyone is not how that stat is supposed to work.

This year with the full court trapping, the 1-3-1, it looks like they have learned NOTHING from the past seasons and are STILL relying on trying to create turnovers vs. just forcing tough shots. It is such a shame because this team looks to be, once more, tremendous on offense. At any given point they can run 5 guys out on the court who can win 1 on 1 matchups, and they now look to have a guy (Thomas) who can be flat out unstoppable. There is NO reason you should go to an opponent's home court, shoot 54%...make more FT's than your opponent attempts, score 81, and STILL lose.

I still think this team will be good. Just like last season. But unless the staff is willing to do some real soul-searching regarding their defensive approach, it is a team that will likely play on a razor's edge against many opponents (regardless of quality) because they can't string together enough stops to allow their offense to stretch a lead. It also a team that will probably have a ceiling in that they won't be able to overcome a great, balanced team, by simply just winning a shootout.

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I think Wade is too tied to the analytics that say defense without fouling is a "winning" stat. While true, not fouling because you refuse to closely guard anyone is not how that stat is supposed to work.

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It really makes me scratch my head when a player drives and our defender plays the matador defense and just kinda gets out of the way. It may be an old school approach, but I think I would rather be physical and send a message that we're not just gonna let them get a free lay up. I'm in no way saying do anything dirty. Just get in there and put a body on people.

Damn, we hire pelini to coach basketball too? That contract doesn’t look so bad after all, the dude coaches 2 sports.

That's the exact same thing I said to my son while we were watching. It's not as easy as it sounds though, because screens will come into play to free up the shooter, and that amish kid was nailing 3s all day too, so it wasn't like there was only one guy to worry about.

In Wade’s first and second seasons we were able to mask some of these issues. We had Reath and Bigby-Williams to protect the rim allowing the wings to avoid helping as much on dribble penetration. But that only masked the real issue which is an inability to stop dribble penetration.

Smart really struggles guarding the ball, largely because he guards the ball standing almost straight up. Cook did a nice job against SIUE, I didn’t get to see most of the St. Louis game.