LSU could’ve used some motivation

Published 1:50 pm Friday, March 18, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Thursday’s first real round of the NCAA tournament came and went with the usual array of upsets and near misses, heartaches and dreams dashed, often as not by brackets destroyed in your very own office.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But mostly it just confirmed what we all already suspected.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU wasn’t in it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yeah, I double-checked.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nowhere to be seen.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They had room for 68 teams but no LSU.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even with 68 participants, some teams had gripes of the snub, some even legitimate.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You’d didn’t hear a peep out of LSU.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Some other Tigers are enjoying the tournament … no wait.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There’s your tournament story. With so many to choose from, there were no Tigers — none, LSU or otherwise — in the entire blasted tournament.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">With all those available tigers loose on the college landscape, you have to wonder, when was the last time that happened?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">All of the regal tiger mascots no doubt have their own sad tale to tell as to why they’re sitting home with no more rooting interest than their own personal brackets.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU’s is particularly confounding.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Those Tigers, as you’ve probably heard, managed to miss the Big Dance even with wunderkind Ben Simmons, probably soon to be the NBA’s No.1 pick, in residence for the duration.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Tigers have been widely scolded for the oversight, and much worse — they’ve all but been labeled America’s Underachievers.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It is not meant as a compliment.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So head coach Johnny Jones, for now, is wearing the national dunce cap for it, with large guffaws directed at the program from sea to shining sea.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU, of course, decided against even being considered for the NIT.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was probably to avoid more embarrassment, but the official response has been that it’s so Jones can get a head start on the autopsy to make sure nothing like this season ever happens again.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It does not appear that his job is in any jeopardy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">After the recent ham-fisted approach to putting a football coach on the hot seat, perhaps all the athletic department’s movers and shakers are a little gun shy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s probably for the best.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So Jones will likely be given the opportunity to figure out what went wrong.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It will be quite the puzzle.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Jones, to his credit, took full responsibility for the debacle and, even more to his credit, it did not appear to be lip service.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It would be interesting to know what he uncovers in the offseason soul searching.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No doubt the lack of defense will stick out — has any team ever defended the simple layup with a more dumbfounded look? — and the offense too often appeared to consist of one guy with the ball and four others standing around waiting for opponents to get bored and leave them alone.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the Xs and Os may end up being the least of it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or, at the least, it would have been the easiest thing to fix with an often dysfunctional team.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Final Straw — Texas A&amp;M 71, LSU 38 with the season on the line — may have highlighted the real problem.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It may be too harsh to say LSU quit, but once things went slightly awry, the Tigers didn’t seem to have, to borrow a phrase from Les Miles, the chest for it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">OK — let’s just say it — it looked like they threw in the towel.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At best, with the season on the line, they seemed to be going through the motions, didn’t seem to want to be there.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was certainly no sense of urgency, a common denominator during the late season meltdown.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And that’s the biggest puzzle: Why couldn’t Jones motivate them better?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At halftime of the Texas A&amp;M embarrassment, Jones even said he was happy with his team’s energy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Happy with who? What?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe he was just being nice.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe that was part of the problem.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Often times, it seems, Jones appeared to sit idly by during a frustrating game as things went from mediocre to bad to worse.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s not his style, perhaps, to rant and rave at his team or officials.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And maybe it’s true that you can’t pretend to be somebody you’re not.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it is odd given that Jones is an unapologetic prot?g? of Dale Brown.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Brown, aside from throwing an occasional “freak defense” into the mix, didn’t dazzle you with his Xs and Os either.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, good grief, the man they called Daddy Dale he could evermore motivate a team.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He lived by it, often went delightfully overboard. He was not above mistaking a nice comeback for a miracle testament to the human spirit’s indomitable will to overcome life’s injustices with heart, grit, determination (and maybe a couple of well-timed 3-pointers).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Brown, I’m guessing, would have somehow gotten himself kicked out of that Texas A&amp;M game — an antic of desperation, perhaps, but he’d have tried something and his team would have gone down fighting for every last rebound.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe Jones should give his old coach a call.</span>