The LSU basketball team will officially start the post-Jaime Lloreda era at possibly the most inopportune time of the year — when they are making a push for an NCAA Tournament bid.
Lloreda has left the LSU program and will not suit out again for the Tigers, said LSU coach John Brady after practice on Tuesday.
The Tigers (17-8, 7-7 Southeastern Conference) host Ole Miss (12-13, 4-10 SEC) tonight in the PMAC at 7 p.m. in desperate need of a win after dropping four-straight league contests. Normally, teams with lower than a .500 conference record are not invited to the tournament.
In Sunday’s 70-64 loss to No. 9 Kentucky, LSU played without Lloreda, and Brady was encouraged by some things he saw despite the loss.
“Even though we didn’t win the game, we certainly competed at a high level for some positive moments,” Brady said.
Brady said the writing on the wall about Lloreda indicated he would not be returning, and Lloreda’s concrete decision may give the Tigers some peace of mind.
“It’s like anything else,” Brady said. “Once there’s closure to a situation, whether it’s a personal situation or it’s relationships or it’s a team or anything, once they see what looks like closure is about to arrive or happen you adjust. And I think that it’s just human nature, and I think that is what our team was able to do a little bit.”
The closure may be coming at just the right time.
With the Rebels coming to town and a trip to Auburn on the horizon, LSU needs nothing on its mind but basketball, especially because wins in both of those games will almost assure the Tigers of a NCAA Tournament berth.
“I don’t even know what’s going on,” said LSU guard Antonio Hudson about Lloreda’s situation. “Regardless of what happens, we’ve go to play with what we’ve got. That’s what it boils down to.”
The Tigers will need to improve their efforts from the first game against Ole Miss, when LSU lost 53-49 in Oxford and was downright anemic on offense.
The Rebels held LSU to 36.4 percent shooting from the field, and the Tigers shot 12-of-20 from the free throw line.
Defensively, LSU held Ole Miss to 37.5 percent shooting from the field, but were ineffective in stopping the Rebels’ two main scoring options, senior forward Justin Reed and senior guard Aaron Harper.
Harper scored 22 points on 7-of-16 shooting, while Reed scored 16 points and pulled down nine rebounds.
The duo is averaging a combined 35.9 points per game, while the rest of the team is averaging a combined 28.8 points per contest.
“The last Ole Miss game we played the worst game of the season,” said LSU forward Brandon Bass. “We just played bad. All-around bad. Offensively and defensively, we just played bad on both ends.”
Brady said Ole Miss has not changed much since the last match-up.
“Ole Miss does the same things,” Brady said. “They run a four-in, one-out motion, they’re good defensively on the ball, they’re a good rebounding team, and their biggest problem has been scoring the ball.”
Because of Ole Miss’ offensive ineptitude, Brady said it was obvious what the Tigers have to do to win.
“It doesn’t take a real genius to figure out that if you slow Reed and Harper down and make someone else beat you, and that is what we’re going to try to do,” Brady said. “We didn’t do a very good job of guarding either one of them (last game). We didn’t do a very good job much of anything until we went to a zone late and we knew what we were supposed to do and we just didn’t do it. We just didn’t play too well.”