LSU coach Will Wade was not in a joyous mood as he walked into the media room for his press conference following a 92-82 win over Georgia on Wednesday night.
It was expected after Wade spent much of the second half pacing up and down the court, and at one point, began screaming from the half-court line for his team to get back on defense.
There’s no secret as to why Wade started to become frustrated in the second half. Georgia pounded LSU in the paint for the last 13 minutes of the game, and the Tigers defense looked helpless to stop them. Georgia coach Tom Crean said he kept preaching to cut hard to the basket and at some point, his message finally went through to his players.
The Bulldogs scored 14 of their 17 second-half field goals in the paint, with all 14 of those coming after 13 minutes, 22 seconds remained in the half. The lone shot made outside the paint after that point in the game was a three pointer by junior guard Tyree Crump with five seconds left.
“Our communication was bad,” said Wade, who felt like the defense regressed to where they were at the beginning of the year and did not meet the expectations or standards set recently. ”We were a step slow, we got beat on backdoors, we had our foot angles bad on the perimeter, we were out there chasing them too long, we gave direct line drives, and when we weren’t getting that we were letting the ball in the post too easily – our post guys got put in the basket. Besides that, we were OK. Our transition defense was terrible as well, so besides all that, I guess the defense was serviceable.
“Our transition defense was awful, our post defense was even worse, and our on-ball defense was not very good, and we got just cut up,” Wade continued. “They were cutting so much harder than us. We didn’t backdoor snap one time, we didn’t get deflections, and it was as poor as we can be.
“I’m embarrassed.”
The second-year head coach added he wasn’t happy with the way LSU practiced this week and had a feeling what occurred Wednesday night would. He described LSU’s interior defense collapse as “coming from a 100 miles away,” calling Georgia a different team that requires a different mindset, which LSU did not have against the Bulldogs.
“We won that’s good, and that’s the point of the deal – is to win – but we have to learn from this,” said Wade, emphasizing the Tigers will get exposed on the road against Missouri if the team comes out with a similar defensive performance. “When you win and don’t play well, you’re tempting the basketball gods, and we’ve got to certainly play a lot better on Saturday.”