LSU got its season back on track; here's how the Tigers can repeat

Kim Mulkey hasn’t seemed satisfied with LSU‘s performances this season. But following Sunday’s 99-68 rout of Arkansas, it was difficult for the four-time national champion head coach to take issue with what she saw.

“We pretty much were special on both ends of the floor,” Mulkey said.

The Tigers were riding high after the big win — their most complete effort in SEC play to date — but a significantly tougher challenge awaits. LSU hosts top-ranked South Carolina on Thursday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App) at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in what’s expected to be the marquee matchup of the SEC regular season. The Gamecocks have won 27 consecutive road games, and No. 9 LSU is still looking for its first win in the series since Mulkey took over.

The Tigers have already experienced several seasons within a season. Hype surrounded the defending national champions in the offseason, especially after bringing in top transfers Aneesah Morrow (DePaul) and Hailey Van Lith (Louisville). With those two combined with the nation’s top freshman class, 2023 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Angel Reese and reigning SEC freshman of the year Flau’jae Johnson, many basketball fans called LSU a “superteam” even before it took the court.

Then came a tumultuous November. Then-No. 20 Colorado handily defeated the Tigers 92-78 in their season opener, followed by an array of personnel issues. Reese was absent for four games without an explanation from Mulkey, Kateri Poole departed the team and promising sophomore Sa’Myah Smith was lost for the season to a knee injury.

With Reese in tow, LSU got back on track with an 18-point win over then-No. 9 Virginia Tech in late November and rattled off 16 consecutive victories before getting upset by unranked Auburn on Jan. 14 on the road. No matter how much talent they have, the speed bump showed the Tigers still have a ways to go before becoming a surefire Final Four contender.

The chemistry of this new-look LSU team remains a work in progress, but it seems to have a clear sense of identity. The Tigers thrive from pushing in transition, offensive rebounding, scoring second-chance points and getting to the free throw line. Led by Reese (19.9 PPG), Morrow (18.2) and freshman Mikaylah Williams (16.5), they can score plenty of points without being a prolific 3-point shooting team.

We’ve also seen a sort of blueprint to beat them. In both losses, Colorado and Auburn were disruptive defensively and contained LSU in transition. They kept up with the Tigers at the free throw line, or held them below their average number of trips, while also not letting them dominate the glass. Both teams also comfortably beat LSU in 3-point scoring.

Nonetheless, the Tigers haven’t deviated from their goal: a return trip to the Final Four and becoming the first repeat champions since UConn in 2013 to 2016. LSU appeared in four straight national semifinals from 2004 to 2008, but Mulkey never made it that far in consecutive tournaments at Baylor. A win over the Gamecocks — who throttled the Tigers 88-64 in their sole meeting last year in Columbia — would show the basketball world the 2023-24 Tigers are for real.

Ahead of Thursday, here are five LSU storylines to watch heading into the must-see showdown and for the rest of the season.

Can LSU’s defense take the next step?

Mulkey has repeatedly said she doesn’t worry about whether this team can score; she is more concerned about whether the Tigers can defend.

“Where we’re not polished is on the defensive end of the floor and sacrificing our bodies and taking charges and keeping people in front of you, getting back in transition defense,” Mulkey said heading into LSU’s SEC opener. “That’s when I will really get super excited about how good we can be, but we’re not there yet. We’re giving up way too many points.”

The coach looks at two numbers in particular to make that judgment: field goal percentage defense and points allowed. She doesn’t want opponents to shoot better than 39.9% or score more than 68 points.

The Tigers have held opponents below that scoring threshold in all but six games and have allowed teams to convert better than 39.9% in seven contests — including their sole losses on the season (Colorado shot 53.2%, Auburn 44.1%). Among SEC teams, LSU ranks eighth in scoring defense (61.5 points allowed per game) and fourth in field goal percentage defense (36.2).

Mulkey points to the team’s lack of connectivity as the main culprit. Sometimes players struggle with help defense and don’t communicate enough with each other. They don’t use the correct angles in their defensive positioning (she has brought that point up regarding Van Lith) and their 3-point defense can be inconsistent (such as allowing five treys in the first half against Alabama but zero in the second).

On Sunday, the Tigers largely contained Arkansas, which can get hot from 3. But whether they manage to slow down the Gamecocks, who average over 90 points and are the nation’s best 3-point shooting team, will indicate whether LSU’s defense can be elite.

The X factor

For as talented as LSU is offensively, it has had issues, exemplified by a season-low 62 points against Auburn when the Tigers shot 41.8% from the field, their fourth-worst clip of the season, and went 0-for-2 on 3-pointers. Mulkey attributed the struggles to Auburn’s defense, but also felt her team wasn’t screening or moving to counteract it.

Guard play is LSU’s X factor. The Tigers know what they’re going to get each night from Reese (double-double) and Morrow, who for the most part has adjusted well to SEC play. But the continued development of their backcourt — Van Lith, Johnson and Williams — will heavily determine the Tigers’ ceiling. It’s no coincidence they combined for 22 points in the Auburn loss.

Johnson’s scoring (13.2 PPG) is a welcomed boost, although she shines when impacting the game in multiple ways, like perimeter defense and being an Energizer Bunny. Williams garnered comparisons to Maya Moore by Arkansas coach Mike Neighbors. Her jumper is a thing of beauty, as is her efficiency (50% from the field, 44% from 3, 81% from the free throw line).

Van Lith is still adjusting to point guard after playing shooting guard at Louisville. Her assist-to-turnover ratio is just 1.64 (for what it’s worth, the Tigers only assist on 54.7% of their baskets). Of LSU’s most frequently used lineups, the team has a better net rating with a lineup in which Last-Tear Poa is playing alongside the starters instead of Van Lith (plus-50.8 points per 100 possessions vs. plus-29.3), although the biggest disparity comes at the defensive end. Save for a last-ditch substitution to try to get a 3-pointer off, Mulkey went with Poa instead of Van Lith for the final 4:40 when trying to come back against Auburn.

Van Lith has spoken to getting more comfortable making reads and finding ways to be aggressive, even if it doesn’t mean scoring herself. Mulkey has consistently stressed how hard it is to learn the point guard spot, and that Van Lith will continue to get better at some of the little things the more reps she gets.

Depth not on their side

Depth wasn’t a concern at the start of the season. But that was before Smith, a forward, was sidelined and Poole, a guard who was a key part of the Tigers’ national title run, left.

Mulkey has stuck with a seven player rotation, with point guard Poa (21.1 minutes per game) and center Aalyah Del Rosario (12.4 minutes per game) seeing the most minutes off the bench. Poa is capable of making an impact defensively (count on her to draw multiple charges per game) and helping facilitate the offense, whether she’s playing alongside or in place of Van Lith.

Mulkey has said she’s still looking for an eighth and maybe ninth player to crack the rotation. Depth isn’t a requirement for a long postseason run, but it’s worth seeing how it progresses and whether it is a factor Thursday against the incredibly deep Gamecocks.

Mastering consistency

Viewers never totally know what they’re going to get when they turn on an LSU game. Oftentimes, the Tigers start slow before pulling away in the second half. Other times, such as against Ole Miss, they stumble out of gate in the third quarter or, against Auburn in particular, let up disastrously in the fourth.

The inconsistency can also impact whether they do the little things to win games. In a five-point loss to Auburn, the Tigers only converted 20 of 32 layups, including 1 of 5 in the fourth quarter, and missed nine of 25 attempts at the free throw line.

The margin for error is even slimmer going forward. After all, against Utah last season, LSU was four seconds and two made free throws away from going home in the Sweet 16.

Developing connectivity, leadership

Considering the pieces Mulkey lost from last season’s team (especially an experienced point guard leader in Alexis Morris) and the new ones she had to incorporate, LSU was always going to need some time to come together this season.

Much of LSU’s potential will be determined by how its chemistry develops on both ends, but also in how the Tigers go about accountability and leadership in the face of adversity. Against Auburn, Mulkey felt everyone looked for someone else to make a play, instead of them all coming together to make it work. That collective has been better since, including in their win over Alabama. But being able to get the best out of its players, plus sharpening the intangible edge, will be the difference between whether LSU fulfills its potential or falls short in a wave of what-ifs.

“Humbly, I feel like we have a lot of talent. For us, it’s about battling ourselves … and really committing to our principles and playing at the standard we know we’ve got to play at,” Johnson said after the win over Alabama. “Our will to win was high of course because we just came off an embarrassing loss, but I think it’s more so internally — that will to play for each other, to defend with each other, to help each other, that’s the will we had tonight, and you felt the energy.”