Two 18-point blowouts at Florida and Tennessee showed how dominant the LSU men’s basketball team can be.
A four-point win in Oxford, Mississippi, showed how gritty the Tigers can play.
A four-point loss to Auburn at the PMAC showed how LSU can be its own worst enemy.
But those games don’t mean much now for the Tigers, who play four of their remaining five games against teams they’ve already faced this season. When squaring off against a familiar foe, LSU sophomore forward Jarell Martin said success isn’t determined by strategy as much as by desire.
“It’s about who wants it more,” Martin said.
With less than three weeks left in the regular season, there are few surprises teams can throw at their opponents. Coaches have scouted the opposition since late November, becoming as familiar with a rival’s tendencies as their own.
LSU coach Johnny Jones said teams can add “some wrinkles” to their in-game strategies, but the basic concepts will be what they’ve been all year.
“The body of what people will do offensively and defensively will certainly be the same,” Jones said. “It’s just a matter of being able to execute ­— be it on the offensive end of the floor making your plays or defensively with what you are doing against your opponent.”
Every Southeastern Conference team knows LSU succeeds when it gets the ball inside to Martin and fellow sophomore forward Jordan Mickey — the league’s third-highest scoring duo at 32.5 points per game — rather than shoot from the outside.
The Tigers are 12-2 when Martin and Mickey have combined for at least 30 points this season, but their record plummets to 5-6 when they fail to reach that mark.
When LSU’s dynamic forward tandem isn’t getting its normal touches in the paint, it’s usually because the team is shooting with a quick trigger from beyond the arc. The Tigers are 6-6 when they attempt more than 15 3-pointers in a game, including a 3-5 mark in SEC play with losses to cellar dwellers Missouri, Mississippi State and Auburn.
With five games left in the season, LSU junior guard Keith Hornsby said it’s “OK” to add “some tweaks” to the game plan so long as the overall approach remains the same.
“Strategy plays into it because we can take things and learn from our first games and maybe change up the strategy against teams if we need to,” Hornsby said. “But we shouldn’t change our identity.”
However, the Tigers didn’t learn from their mistakes in a rematch against Texas A&M on Tuesday.
LSU led by at least eight points in the second half of both meetings with the Aggies this season before faltering down the stretch.
In both games, the Tigers went away from their All-SEC big men and relied heavily on outside shooting, going a combined 3-for-23 from 3-point range in two second halves against Texas A&M. In both games, Martin and Mickey averaged a combined 24 points.
With LSU going away from its strength inside, the Aggies swept the season series by a total of nine points.
Now, the Tigers go from the hunters to the hunted. Three of their last five games are against teams they’ve already beaten this season, including the two 18-point thumpings against the Gators and the Volunteers.
Florida, Tennessee and Ole Miss will all be seeking revenge against LSU, and Martin said the Tigers must match that intensity if they hope to sweep a series or two of their own.
“The team that comes out wanting it more is going to be the team with success at the end,” Martin said. “It’s just a matter of us going out there and wanting it as a team. If we want it as a team, then we’ll come out and play real well.”
You can reach David Gray on Twitter @dgray_TDR.