The Opening Tip: LSU

Happy holidays, everyone.

Oh, not those holidays, even though we're in December. Thanksgiving is in our rearview mirror, but I'm not even talking about the arrival of Christmas trees or lights. Santa's hard at work in his workshop, but I don't mean the eventual sleigh ride with the red-nosed reindeer at the front of the helm. I'm not even talking about how my house hoards gallons of frying oil for our mid-month excursion into potato latkes and jelly donuts.

In fact, the holiday isn't anywhere on anyone's calendar, but for people like me, the start of December marks the real start to the college basketball season. Yep, all of that information that we've been feeding you about games and results is unofficially declared null and void at the end of Feast Week's multi-team events, and we can all begin fully ramping up our college basketball intake to a much more serious degree.

Now I know what you're thinking, and I agree that it's hard to compound the "real start" of a college basketball season against games that actually counted, but the baseline understanding in the sport reboots and resets after teams stack enough results on top of one another. Nobody's postseason aspirations are quite up in smoke, but nearly every team now carries an individualized road to a tournament that's uphill, downhill or on an even-level.

"You can see the progress from even our first games a couple of months ago," said Boston College forward Aidan Shaw after the team's victory in its last outing against Harvard. "I feel like we're gelling on the court and off the court [and] building that trust. Every game, you can see it in our assists, [where] our assists have gone up a lot, and it just shows that we trust each other."

The nuanced conversation about a team's path to the NCAA Tournament or any other postseason bracket requires an understanding about the analytics and polls that swirl around the selection process, and we'll get into the NCAA Evaluation Tool - or NET - as the season progresses. We'll continue using other analytics like the Pomeroy and Torvik systems to size up head-to-head matchups, and the hope and expectation is that even unranked or unheralded teams like BC still have the potential and runway to make a run through their relative peers.

Those details inevitably matter, but their most basic statement overarches everything by forcing teams to gain good results against good teams while avoiding bad results against lower-regarded teams. Extra results - especially when a bad result is impacting the overall perception of a program's season - are even more critical since the results themselves are malleable because of the full body of work that stretches through the entire winter.

That cloth therefore provides the context surrounding Wednesday night's ACC-SEC Challenge matchup between a Boston College team looking to claw its way through the ratings system by first scoring a victory against an elite-level LSU team that's already part of the top-seeded class.

It's a massive game for both sides, so here's what's on tap when two teams clash at Conte Forum on Wednesday night:

****
LSU Storylines (Hustle Edition)

Stanley: I'll say one last inspirational thing to you: they can't kill you if you're already dead.

LSU's lack of a national ranking in the Associated Press or the USA Today Sports Coaches Poll is normally an easy-to-spot snub for a 7-0 team that's currently among the seven-best SEC programs in the KenPom system. The No. 19 team in the NET Rankings are fifth best in a conference that includes three perfect teams, two one-loss teams and a dozen two-loss programs. Even the lowest-seeded SEC team at Mississippi State is 3-1 at home and undefeated against Quad 4 teams, which is unquestionably the largest available demerit, so an unblemished team from that conference should easily slot into someone's top-25 more frequently than the 14 votes in the Coaches Poll or the half-counted seven votes from the AP.

But given those numbers, there are gaps in LSU's overall resume. Even at 7-0, the Tigers haven't played an opponent ranked inside of KenPom's top-100, and the Torvik model that accounts for more recency bias places LSU at No. 33 because its poor game score efficiency model wasn't strong enough in a 26-point win over Alcorn State. Strange as that sounds, expecting LSU to beat the Braves by significantly more points helped slide the program further back after its efficiency ratings comparatively struggled against Drake.

Most of this is splitting hairs for a team that's rightly headed for an NCAA Tournament candidacy, but the fact remains that the two major analytical models are split from one another because of their inherent recency biases, while the NET rating that only cares about contextualizing a final score has the Tigers skyrocketing.

To that end, the major question or perception of LSU is therefore centered on three easy roads. According to NET, LSU is singlehandedly capable of earning a No. 4 seed if the tournament started today. According to KenPom, the Tigers are a top-25 team. According to Torvik and ESPN's Basketball Power Index, they're elite but lacked a bit of their expected punch compared to the start of the season.

Stanley: Obsession is going to beat talent every time.

Part of LSU's success over the first seven games stemmed from a full-blown domination of the interior. Nobody was able to stop the Tigers from pouring points at the rim, and their plus-14 percent shooting percentage over the national average on two-point shots all but killed each of their opponents on any given night.. Their three-point attempts are slightly lower than the national average because of that, but it's difficult to tell if those numbers would increase against a defense that's built to push offenses into bad decisions and off-hand outside shots.

"We try to defend," said head coach Earl Grant after the win over Harvard. "That's something that we try to do, every day, in practice, and we hope that it'll carry over into the game. I thought we had a good game plan, and the staff put together that good game plan in one day. Players had a good attention to detail with the plan, and then they just executed it [with] us being disciplined and sound."

For all of the warts and attention paid to BC's issues in shooting the three-pointer over the first eight games, the Eagles were one of the best teams in the nation at preventing opponents from creating outside shots off of assist ratios. Even after the Harvard game that featured fewer three-point attempts in the second half than teams normally opted to shoot, BC opponents were a full five percentage points under the national average on three-point shooting percentage against the Eagles. Considering the three-point attempt ratio was close to the national average against the BC defense, that's an overlooked piece of the team's first month.

Nobody's been able to shoot well against BC this season. Part of that is due to block numbers that are within the top-50, but the Eagles take care of the basketball and would have been significantly better if the ball landed through the hoop in three of their four losses. The lone exception is Tulane, which is the only time this season that a team's scored more than 80 points against BC in regulation.

Stanley: You got to be an iceberg out there, all floating around, and sharp, taking down ships.

Unfortunately for BC, forcing the ball inside is a recipe for LSU's success. The offense is going to look a bit different compared to the first six games of the season because of Jalen Reed's injury, but there's enough size in the Tiger frontcourt to continually force forwards into more physical positions.

"It's hard in this era," said Grant. "It's hard because you have seven new guys, and it's not like the team from last year is teaching the new guys. Everybody is learning something new, and then I'm learning something from another school, so it's unlearning the learning. It takes time."

Forward Mike Nwoko destroyed both New Orleans and Alcorn State earlier this season by scoring 20-plus points exclusively on the interior, and his six offensive rebounds against the Braves helped boost him to almost 40 percent of the team's total offense. A slight dip in performance against Nebraska-Omaha stands out as an anomaly because neither his foul numbers nor his turnover numbers exclusively jumped, but it's also worth noting that those performances echoed his games against LSU and Alabama as a member of last year's Mississippi State team.

In what's maybe one of the more intriguing subplots to this game, the one-time Miami Hurricane actually produced one of his best performances at his first home when he was used exclusively as a reserve in the 2024 ACC Tournament loss to BC. Even in 16 minutes, he went 2-for-3 from the floor with a defensive board despite a comparative lack of minutes from the games against Duke or Syracuse.

*****
Question Box

How does LSU adapt to losing Jalen Reed for a second straight season?

Reed's return from last season's torn ACL offered one of college basketball's best comeback stories and provided the Tigers with senior-type leadership from a fourth year player until he suffered an Achilles injury in last Friday's Emerald Coast Classic win over Drake. Having scored in double figures in his first three games made him remarkably consistent through 20-minute performances, and his steady presence around the rim grabbed no fewer than three defensive boards in any of his six appearances since returning from the injury. It's also worth noting that he was almost never in foul trouble.

Losing Reed to injury is terrible for those of us who genuinely enjoyed watching him play around the rim in those first couple of weeks, and it forced LSU to push sophomore Robert Miller into a more sustained role after he played 19 combined minutes against Nebraska-Omaha and Drake. And while the numbers were similar to Reed's output in those first few games, the offensive rating dropped to a second sub-100 performance in the win over the Blue Demons.

He'll need to control his turnover rate while increasing his rebounding percentage against BC, especially since both of those numbers dropped against DePaul and even more especially since Aidan Shaw started to move into improved offensive ratings against Hampton, Tulane and Harvard.

Can the guards dictate the pace against Dedan Thomas?

The UNLV transfer was one of the most heavily-used guards over his first two years with the Rebels, so moving his motor into the LSU lineup made for an easy combination with the newly-arrived Nwoko. A 40 percent assist rate is 14th in the nation through the early part of the season, but it's not like moving the basketball through the point created turnovers or issues for a player who was routinely among the 500-best college basketball players in preventing opposing opportunities.

In terms of backcourt attacks, Thomas is one of the highest-rated players at drawing fouls, and even his two-point shooting percentage is well over 60 percent. His lone double-double occurred when he dished out 10 helpers alongside 15 points against Omaha, and he's yet to record less than five assists in any game through the first month - all while staying out of foul trouble.

Did I turn on my snowblower and stand in the sleet for no reason?

I'm still mad about how Tuesday's forecast didn't come to fruition. I didn't really get to use my snowblower last year because we only received 28 inches over the entire winter, and I'm chomping at the bit to get out there and play with my adult toy.

I'm sure someone got the six or nine inches that were forecasted, but it wasn't me.

*****
BC-LSU X Factor

Your strengths have to stand out. Your strengths have to be perfected. -Brad Stevens

Fred Payne very quietly developed into one of Boston College's most dependable assets over his time at Conte Forum, but it's shocking to see a player remain unheralded when his percentages stand up to bigger brand names across college basketball.

As a guard, Payne is shooting 55 percent at the rim and 41 percent on mid-range shots with an additional 33.3 percent rate on three-point jump shots. Three-quarters of his three-pointers have been assisted, but his mid-range two-point shot is one of the least-assisted shots in his arsenal, which means that he's been dribble-driving and making his own determination at the basket. Despite that, his rolling assist numbers remain remarkably steady, even as he's been forced to shift into an unnatural point guard position that he previously didn't play.

Players like Purdue's Fletcher Loyer aren't tasked with the same type of shooting numbers when every single one of his 24 three-point field goals on a 52 percent success rate have been assisted, and Cameron Boozer is comparatively scoring more three-pointers with 90 percent coming off of the pass.

Payne isn't on the same level as Loyer or Boozer when it comes to national recognition - rightfully so, considering that each plays for one of the two best teams currently going - but it's awfully hard to continue overlooking a player who has the ability and is starting to find increased stability within a lineup that's beginning to gel.

*****
Scoreboard Watching

Let's go back to the polls for a quick second.

College basketball polls are much more glacial than their football counterparts because a larger volume of teams carry the same record through the early part of the season. The algorithm determining analytics poll after analytics poll doesn't substitute for the eye test when Michigan, Purdue, Arizona, Duke, UConn, Michigan State, Houston and so many other teams are continually winning games at a rapid level, and even the losses for an Alabama, a Tennessee, a Gonzaga or an Illinois are usually overcome either by an explanation or subsequent wins. Few teams take an anvil-like drop through the polls without a safety net, though the most recent coaches poll dropped Florida from No. 8 to No. 14 after its loss to unranked TCU along with a seven-spot drop for St. John's after Rick Pitino's crew lost to both No. 15 Iowa State and No. 21 Auburn.

It's important to understand all of that context because it's harder to climb into the poll. Baylor is 4-1 with its only loss to Johnnies, but 13 votes from the AP keep it significantly out of the rankings despite plenty of top-25 love from the KenPom analytics. Ditto for Clemson, which has 10 votes from the AP despite beating West Virginia and Georgia with a near-miss against Georgetown.

All of that tends to change when December starts things like the ACC-SEC Challenge and the former Big East-Big 12 Battle. Games are intentionally slotted based on the perceived competitive nature of those matchups, so Florida's game against Duke and North Carolina's game at Kentucky on Tuesday night brought layers that didn't exist from those early season blowouts.

Even on Wednesday night, No. 6 Louisville travels to No. 25 Arkansas while No. 12 Alabama hosts Clemson opposite the BC-LSU game, and No. 17 Vanderbilt defends its undefeated record against SMU while NC State - freshly out of the rankings - heads to No. 20 Auburn. Virginia is also in Texas with Mississippi State heading to Georgia Tech.

Elsewhere in college basketball, an early-evening game between Northeastern and Holy Cross provides some local flavor, and No. 22 Indiana is at Minnesota to start its Big Ten play. Later on, the giant killers from Central Connecticut are Seton Hall with UMass hosting Harvard in a matchup between BC's last opponent and its next - something that I'll highlight much more frequently over the next week.

Georgetown hosts UMBC at 8 p.m. in a Beltway-area matchup, and the late night gives us Vermont's trip to Oregon State, with UCLA tipping off against Washington in the Big Ten's nightcap.

*****
This Random Day In History

The Beatles entered 1965 as one of the hottest acts in music history. Their world tour featured 37 shows across a four-week period in the previous summer, and they wrapped up August and September by returning to the United States for a final leg of their initial British invasion. They'd forced the integration of a show in Jacksonville by refusing to play at the segregated Gator Bowl, and their trip through 1965 included receiving the Order of the British Empire before Help! entered theaters with an accompanying album and another sold-out tour that included the infamous Shea Stadium show.

By the end of the year, they were back in the studio and recording an album without anything in front of them. Starting to think about their actual artform, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote Rubber Soul while they expanded their minds under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Finding inspiration through their, well, influences, they began to push boundaries with their music by significantly departing from their earlier roots before it received release on December 3, 1965.

To this day, Rubber Soul is loaded with some of the best songs of the group's history. What begins with "Drive My Car" continues with the sitar-based "Norwegian Wood" before diving directly into "You Won't See Me" and "Nowhere Man." "Think For Yourself" is one of George Harrison's contributions to the album before "The Word" and "Michelle" round out the first side.

As for the back side, "Girl" is an insanely complicated melody, and "In My Life" is a retrospective that showcases the retrospective piece of Lennon's childhood.

*****
Pregame Quote and Final Thoughts

Most frontmen are not born hams like David Lee Roth. We're more like Joey Ramone: awkward geeks who somehow find our place in the world on the stage. -Chris Cornell

Chris Cornell was one of music's most gifted lyricists, and I remember reading about how his relationship with Eddie Vedder illustrated how music brought different geniuses together within a shared love of an artform. He was also one of my favorite musical artists with both Soundgarden and Audioslave.

BC battered Harvard because it was able to enforce its style of play against an opponent, and it was really the first time that this group started to play a full 40 minutes of cohesive basketball. Runs still existed, but the Eagles started to plant the first foundational stone of Grant's overall message.

LSU now arrives in Chestnut Hill for a massive non-conference schedule. A BC team that wasn't born into this style is starting to find its home, and the biggest question remaining points towards the ability of the Eagles to continue developing the next phase of their game by continuing to settle onto that stage against an SEC opponent.

Boston College and LSU tip-off at 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday night from Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game can be seen on national television via the ACC Network with a streaming platform available through ESPN's direct-to-consumer platform on Internet and mobile device apps. Radio coverage is additionally available through WEEI 850 AM.

Related News

Players Mentioned

Fred Payne

Aidan Shaw

Related Videos