In October, the SEC preseason media poll predicted that LSU would finish eighth in the conference after an offseason revamping.
It’s now March, and LSU has officially finished at No. 14 out of 14 in the SEC regular season standings. All indications suggest that the Tigers will be on the sidelines for this month’s madness.
LSU posted a 2-16 conference record in which it lost 14 straight games, tying its second-longest losing streak in program history. Despite an 11-2 non-conference record to open the season, the Tigers have found themselves at the bottom of the SEC.
There’s no way around it–LSU’s season has been disappointing. Even the most pessimistic projections didn’t predict the Tigers ranking as the worst team in the SEC, despite losing all but three players from last year’s roster and replacing their head coach.
LSU has no chance of receiving an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament, or any other postseason tournament, for that matter. There’s only one way for LSU to play postseason basketball: it must win the SEC Tournament.
When the tournament begins on Wednesday, March 8, LSU will open against the 11-seed Georgia. If LSU wins there, it will play 6-seed Vanderbilt in the second round, and if the Tigers prevail then, 3-seed Kentucky will be on deck in the quarterfinals. In all, LSU will need to win five straight games to win the tournament.
It goes without saying that LSU faces long odds. For one, there hasn’t been much indication that the Tigers will turn things around any time soon. After they finally broke their losing streak against Vanderbilt on Feb. 22, the Tigers dropped three more games. Two of the losses were by double digits against teams in the bottom half of the conference.
LSU has faced each team represented in this tournament and has lost to all of them, except Vanderbilt. Maybe a second chance with more information about their opponent favors the Tigers, but they haven’t proven to be capable of beating the SEC’s teams throughout this season.
In the past, teams in LSU’s position haven’t done well in the SEC Tournament. History shows that the last seed frequently bows out in the first round, and its season quietly ends.
Since the SEC brought back its postseason tournament in 1979, LSU has been the last seed seven times, including this year. The Tigers won a game only one of those times, in 2001, when they upset Georgia before losing to Arkansas in the second round.
Overall, the last seed in the SEC Tournament has won its first game only nine times since 1979. The 1990-91 Tennessee and 1985-86 Mississippi State teams have been the only last-place teams to win multiple tournament games, with Tennessee making it all the way to the tournament finals before losing to Alabama.
When the SEC expanded to 14 teams by adding Missouri and Texas A&M before the 2012-13 season, the tournament structure had the bottom four teams in the conference play in the tournament’s first round, while the other 10 teams receive byes.
Since then, there have been only six occasions where a team in the first round won another game and made it to the quarterfinals. Only one of those teams, 2014-15 Auburn, made it to the semifinals. Even if LSU were to beat Georgia and move on to face Vanderbilt, teams that escape the first round usually don’t win again.
All of this makes a dream run through the tournament seem incredibly unlikely for LSU. Very little about this team indicates that something special and historically improbable is ahead. As long as the season is still alive, though, the Tigers can dream.
