After a 24-point loss at the hands of Ole Miss and an overtime defeat on Senior Night, the LSU men’s basketball team (17-12, 7-8 Southeastern Conference) will travel to Auburn (14-15, 4-11 SEC) in an attempt to get their second SEC road victory of the season.
With NCAA tournament hopes all but vanished, LSU freshman forward Johnny O’Bryant III said the Tigers took the Senior Night loss to Tennessee especially hard.
“We definitely needed that win,” he said. “We had it. It just seemed like everything was so close. We’ve just got to keep fighting and put that behind us.”
The Tigers don’t have much time to linger on the loss, as they will arrive at Auburn this afternoon to run through practices and watch game tape.
LSU sophomore guard Andre Stringer said the Tigers have been through tough losses with quick turnarounds before.
“It’s nothing new,” he said. “It helps that we’ve been in this situation before. It’s not as hard to just put it behind us and move on.”
The matchup with Auburn will decide LSU’s seeding in next week’s SEC tournament.
LSU is knotted with Mississippi State and Ole Miss with a 7-8 record in SEC play. Arkansas sits only one game behind those three, with a 6-9 conference record and a game against Mississippi State remaining.
While none of those teams can reach a top-four seed for the tournament — which is granted a first-round bye — they will all vie for the No. 6 seed and, theoretically, an easier path for the tournament.
Stringer said the team’s momentum heading into the SEC tournament could be just as important as seeding.
“[Momentum] means a lot,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we need a win right now, but the win would be good for us right now.”
O’Bryant said the Tigers’ recent losses have given them an appetite for wins.
“Right now, we’re a hungry team,” he said. “Ole Miss got us pretty good. We let one slip away in front of our home crowd.”
In the first game between Auburn and LSU this season, the teams went to overtime, where LSU pulled out a 65-58 win.
LSU coach Trent Johnson said Auburn is capable of giving LSU a variety of looks defensively.
“Their versatility and their athleticism and their skill sets cause us problems,” he said. “They change defenses, and they’re a much different team at home than they are on the road.”
“Much different” may be an understatement. Auburn boasts a 13-3 home record, compared to a 1-12 record away from Auburn Arena.
LSU was without O’Bryant in the teams’ first matchup. Johnson said O’Bryant’s size and recent strong play should help LSU against Auburn.
“[O’Bryant provides] post presence, post touches,” Johnson said. “[He’s] another body we can go to. I thought Johnny played well at crucial points [against Tennessee].”
LSU only has two more guaranteed games left in the season, which Johnson stressed to his players.
“We all want to talk about postseason and this and that, but nothing’s promised,” he said. “I tend to want to talk about the mental and physical toughness and dwell on that more than anything else and get them to understand that.”
 
—-
Contact Albert Burford at [email protected]