LSU gets its chance at surprising Ole Miss

Three Southeastern Conference basketball teams have jumped out to 3-0 starts in league play.

Not surprisingly, Tennessee is one of the three teams. However, no one expected either Ole Miss or South Carolina to win its first three SEC games.

LSU, which has won its first two conference games, will play the Rebels and the Gamecocks this week. First up for the Tigers will be Ole Miss at The Pavilion in Oxford on Tuesday (8 p.m. Central/SEC Network).

The Rebels have posted three impressive league victories – at Vanderbilt, home against Auburn and at Mississippi State. Both Auburn and Mississippi State are ranked among the top 25 teams in the country. On the strength of those last two victories, Ole Miss is now No. 18 in the nation.

“Ole Miss is playing as well as anybody in the league,” LSU coach Will Wade said. “Ole Miss is playing with a purpose. It is a typical coach (Kermit) Davis team. They don’t beat themselves. They are tough and physical. Ole Miss has taken on the personality of its coach.

“Ole Miss runs its offense with great pace. (Davis) lets them go for the first eight seconds of the shot clock. If nothing is there in the first eight seconds, they run their stuff. Then, they play a bunch of different defenses.”

The Tigers have won their first two games – at home against Alabama and at Arkansas. But, Wade knows LSU must perform at a higher level if it is going to upset the Rebels on Tuesday.

“Ole Miss has the best backcourt in the league,” Wade said. “This will be a big test for us to stop them. Our defense has not been good in SEC play. We are giving up 84 points a game. That is going to bite us if we don’t get better. We also have to get our turnovers down. We have 35 in two games.

“We need our best game of the season to win at Ole Miss. The atmosphere at The Pavilion will be like it was at Houston. What won at Arkansas for us won’t win at Ole Miss.”

The Rebels use a small lineup with 6-foot-2 Breein Tyree at point guard and 6-2 Devontae Shuler and 6-4 Terence Davis on the wings. Those three players are all averaging more than ten points a game – Tyree (17.5), Davis (15.7) and Shuler (10.6). All three are making at least 40 percent of their 3-point shots.

Ole Miss’ starting post players are 6-7 Blake Hinson and 6-9 Dominik Olejniczak. Even though the Rebels do not have height, they are outrebounding the opposition by six boards a game. Davis is the top rebounder at 5.6 per game. He is also averaging a team-best 3.5 assists per game.

It will be interesting to see if Wade keeps 6-6 Marlon Taylor in the starting lineup to defend Davis. Taylor had 21 points and seven rebounds against Arkansas. Davis is more pleased with Taylor’s defense.

“Marlon did some good things defensively against Arkansas,” Wade said. “He did a good job on (Mason) Jones. Our problem with teams making 3-point shots has been solved by Marlon. He has stopped most of that since he got into the lineup. Now, Marlon still has a lot of stuff to work on.”

The Tigers committed 19 turnovers in the overtime victory against Arkansas – seven by Tremont Waters, who did have 11 assists. One analyst said that Waters is a high risk-high reward point guard. Wade disagrees with part of that assessment.

“Tremont is a high reward point guard,” Wade said. “Some of his passes he gets credited with turnovers. But, he is seeing things before the other player sees what is going to happen. I don’t see those as his turnovers.”

Wade acknowledged that LSU must do a more efficient job at maintaining second-half leads. The Tigers lost games to Florida State and Houston after being comfortably ahead after halftime. Then, Arkansas rallied and forced overtime against LSU.

“It is a game of runs,” Wade said. “But, we have to be able to sustain what we had been doing. We have talked about what has happened. We have analyzed the problems and there are some common denominators.

“A lot of it starts on offense. We have live-ball turnovers where we can’t guard them on the other end. Then, we have a couple of empty possessions and the other team is off and running. The other team becomes more desperate. We must do a better job of protecting leads.”

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