Previewing the LSU Tigers Men’s Basketball team. Can the Tigers be a surprise team?

It’s hard to define LSU basketball. Few programs can tout the highs, lows, and general weirdness of the Bayou Bengals. From Pete Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal, to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Dale Brown and even Ben Simmons and Johnnie Jones. The only thing you can count on regarding LSU Basketball is that it will be interesting.

That is until they hired Matt McMahon. After Will Wade’s embarrassing ending, LSU turned to one of the blandest and most sensible hires imaginable. So far, McMahon has turned in one of the most bland and traditional builds you can think of.

LSU won 14 games in his first season, then just 17 last year. They haven’t been awful, but they haven’t been outstanding. Try to think of a memorable moment from the last few years of LSU basketball. You might struggle to recall a single thing. Maybe you’ll recall their upset win over Kentucky? A game that ended with a fluke bounce where Kentucky’s defense actually made the right play and just caught a bad bounce.

Now, the program has invested in some talent, and they’re looking towards taking another step forward.

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Previous SEC Previews:

• 16. South Carolina Gamecocks, 5-13

LSU Tigers

Last season: 20 – 12 (8-10 in conference) #46

The Masses Prediction: 16th in conference, 4.5 – 13.5

Analytics Average: 13th in conference, 64th overall

Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images

HEAD COACH: Matt McMahon | 3rd Season, 31-35

Several SEC jobs were open three years ago, and Matt McMahon was up for all of them. But he took the job in Baton Rouge after one of the more successful seasons the Murray State Racers had seen. The fit seemed decent enough. McMahon had made his name by working a slow and reliable build in Murray, Kentucky, where you’re never fully down. But just because Murray State has resources and a great history, it doesn’t make the job any less susceptible to downswings. But since 1980, Murray State hasn’t employed a single head coach who was fired. Every coach took a “better” job upon their exit, except Tevester Anderson, who retired.

McMahon was just the latest coach, following Mick Cronin, Billy Kennedy, and Steve Prohm, to jump to a power conference job. And the program at LSU needed a reset to cleanse its image in the wake of the Will Wade scandal. Like I said before, they picked McMahon, who looked pretty safe. In every way, he might be the anti-Wade.

However, the other thing about Wade is that he won many games. And, to date, McMahon’s tenure hasn’t been remarkable. Year one saw a 2-16 last-place finish in the SEC. And last year, the Tigers finished 9-9 but needed a big late-season surge to get there. They won five of their last seven games but lost to Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament and then to North Texas in the NIT. I’m not sure if McMahon’s job is in jeopardy, but it does feel like a pivotal season for his time there.

The last 10 years have been a ride from bottoming out under Johnny Jones to hitting several highs under Will Wade, then scandal, and now the rebuild with McMahon. Expectations are pretty high for LSU, but it’s also worth pointing out how short the attention span can be there.

Football is king, and baseball isn’t far behind. So, if the basketball team isn’t winning big, the crowds can dwindle fast as fans prep for the baseball season. Which is why this season could be an important one. If things don’t go well, LSU may make a move. However, making a case that they should stay the course is easy.

LOST PRODUCTION

% Minutes: 58.43% | 8th
% Points: 61.07% | 8th
% Possessions: 61.74% | 8th

If LSU’s 2023-24 season was rocky, you can at least partially attribute it to the weird two-time transfer rule being stricken down midway through the year. LSU gambled on Tulane transfer Jalen Cook being able to play for them, bringing a ball handler with a scoring edge. But Cook missed the first 10 games and then the last 9 after a suspension. Without a consistent primary ballhandler, the LSU offense struggled. Then, what offense did they have mostly left via expiring eligibility.

Gone is Jordan Wright, their top possession eater at nearly 20% of the team’s possessions and almost 80% of the minutes. Trae Hannibal and Will Baker are also missing now. Hannibal is probably best known for his hesitation in shooting jump shots and over-willingness to attack the rim. And Baker lent a soft scoring touch with limits defensively. Plus, even though he only played in 13 games, Cook still managed to account for over 8% of the team’s possessions.

Steve Roberts-Imagn Images

A reason I’m still a buyer of McMahon is his recruiting. I still think bringing in valuable young talent is the key to long-term success, and he’s essentially done that.

His initial 2022 class held onto Tyrell Ward and added Jalen Reed in the spring. The 2023 class has two top-120 prospects — Mike Williams and Corey Chest — who should see more of the rotation this year. Then, the freshman class has a dynamic point guard, a playmaking wing, and a solid forward who, with time, could be a central part of a very high-quality core. McMahon has also already landed the commitment of a top 100 forward in the 2025 class, and the Tigers are still in the mix for several other high 4-star and 5-star players. Not to mention landing one of the country’s best Junior College post players in the incoming class.

So, the depth and talent level have improved. In season one, McMahon was mostly reliant on his Murray State transfers to supplement the talent level. Last year, there were still many transfers to pick up the slack. How this season goes will depend largely on how much development we see from these younger players who have been in the program for a few years now.

The transfer class brought in was a small one and one devoid of a big star. Instead, LSU might get some scoring pop from Jordan Sears and Cam Carter, but it looks like the returning core and some young talent may be asked to take center stage. I think that’s for the better. Even if it lowers the floor on the season, it could be a springboard into a great year next year.

Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

Coaches tend to be very risk-averse. I want to be wrong, but that approach severely lowers the ceiling on what LSU can be this season. It’s also one of the reasons is that it’s easy to discount what sort of season they might be able to have. The talent level on the roster is excellent and pretty deep, too. But how much do you trust freshmen and sophomores? They’reusually pretty hard to trust. They screw up a lot, especially on the defensive end.

The worry here is that McMahon has a collection of four super seniors: Derek Fountain, Cam Carter, Jordan Sears, and Dji Bailey. These players have been perfectly fine collegiate players over the years, but none have demonstrated they can be impact players for a good team.

Carter is the highest-rated LSU transfer in EvanMiya.com’s BPR at 3.73, making him the 114th-ranked transfer per Miya’s ratings. There were 83 inbound transfers into the SEC, and Carler lands at No. 34 in BPR. Carter was a forgotten bench player at Mississippi State in 2022, transferred into a good Kansas State team for Jerome Tang in year one, but was a role player who was pretty bad offensively with an 89.9 offensive rating. Last year, he was better but still poor at 97.5, and he played a much more significant role for K-State, a team that missed the tournament in a disappointing follow-up season.

Not to single out Carter too much here, but if that’s your best transfer, there’s a fair question about how much the others will help you. For this to work, McMahon probably needs Ward and Reed to really step out from their roles and provide more scoring punch than the 17 points and 6 rebounds they offered last year.

SCHEDULES

LSU’s non-conference slate is manageable, but there can’t be any slip ups. Without a home game against a team in the projected top 100, the Tigers need to run the table at home, and probably pick up at least a couple of the neutral site contests.

Fortunately, again, the SEC’s strength beckons. 13 quad one opportunities in league play alone, plus one for the road game at Kansas State.

THE RULING

Which direction is this going?

Navigating LSU’s potential season is like figuring out street directions in New Orleans for the first time. Whatever direction you think you’re headed will end up confounding you when you hit the wrong side of the river.

The experience on the roster isn’t all that intriguing, but the depth and talent level are worth noting. The main question is where the distribution of points and possessions goes.

McMahon has been very willing to play a deep roster. He leaned pretty hard in year one on Adam Miller and KJ Williams but still played nine guys. Last year, when Jalen Cook was available, they typically played nine guys. Returning to his Murray State days, McMahon generally has gone to nine players getting at least 25% of the available minutes, or roughly 10 minutes per game. I’ll be tracking the minute distribution to the sophomores and freshmen early on, notably Mike Williams, Curtis Givens, and Vyctorius Miller. The more those three play, the less you will likely see from transfers Jordan Sears and Cam Carter.

There’s the gamble, though. What you get from Carter is a known quantity. It’s the value of transfers with experience. There’s a reason the SEC added over 80 transfers with nearly 7,000 games of experience and almost 160,000 minutes of Division-I action. There’s far less risk with transfers. For the Tigers, they didn’t swing hard in the transfer market the way they have, even in the last two years. In 2022, they were second in the SEC in newcomer minutes played. In 2023, they were fifth. In 2024, they’re 10th.

Numbers like that indicate McMahon and his staff are ready to begin a push with their existing talent. LSU is entering the season with one of the least experienced rosters, ahead of only Arkansas, South Carolina, and Georgia.

With that shift come unknowns.

Arkansas might pull it off because John Calipari is used to young and talented rosters. But it’s normally very hard to win with that much youth pulling the rope. So, the season could get rocky in Baton Rouge, but that doesn’t mean McMahon has missed. He’s just currently invested in the ground up. Will the administration have the patience to stick with him if things go awry this season?

My Results: LSU Tigers — 15th in Conference, 5-13

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About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.

If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.

Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.

The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an indepth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.

GLOSSARY

* – an asterisk denotes a walk-on player

GP – Games Played

%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury

%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.

ORtg – Offensive Rating, similar to a points per possession but averaged out over 100 possessions. So it’s how many points a player would score if they were responsible for 100 possessions.

BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.

PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.

For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.