Re-Lent and give up on LSU hoops

Published 5:49 am Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Unless my timing is bit off, today would begin the famed Lenten season, more commonly shortened to just Lent.

It’s an age-old tradition, of course, steeped in good intentions and scattered outbreaks of willpower.

Most of us are always torn between refraining from broccoli or buttermilk, or else there’s always that last-minute scrambling, sort of like Christmas Eve shopping, on what foul thing to take a proper reprieve from.

LSU doesn’t have that problem this year.

It’s easy.

Maybe the Tigers should just give up basketball for Lent.

It’s likely no one will ever notice, certainly not the NCAA tournament selection committee. LSU fans surely won’t miss it. The team itself, though by all accounts still giving it some semblance of the ol’ college try a couple of times a week, must by now know that whatever attempts and varying degrees of effort they expend will prove futile in the end.

It’s not even heartbreak anymore. It’s just harder to watch, and just as predictable — just to put it in terms purple and gold can understand — as watching Lucy snatch that football away just before Charlie Brown can whiff it again.

So give it up for Lent.

Right now.

True, the flaw in all this is that the Tigers’ season wasn’t going to last much longer anyhow.

So maybe consider this a trial run. Maybe LSU figures out it doesn’t really need hoops at all. Almost the entire SEC — not to worry, Kentucky, not looking at you — still seems to only try to act like it’s sort of sometimes, occasionally at least, paying lip service to the sport with another study or mandate or bilateral commission.

And it’s not like tonight’s final home game — Tennessee, I think is visiting — was going to be standing room only. Also, the regular season finale Saturday at Mississippi State is an excellent opportunity to skip Starkville this time of year, any time of year really.

I guarantee you the SEC tournament next week doesn’t need the Tigers to drag down any fragile RPIs on the bubble.

The conference is trying to put a smiley face on the sport, and those games are going to be on television.

And, really, what more has this team got left to accomplish?

The season centerpiece came last Saturday at Georgia when the Tigers lost their 15th consecutive basketball game, an amazing accomplishment in a conference that, as noted, doesn’t get all bent out of shape about the sport.

It spoke to the futility of the situation more than summarizing the remarkable skid. Most were over by halftime, if not sooner.

This one LSU almost won. Probably should have won. Had a good shot (rimmed out) at clinching it late, even got an offensive rebound or two and came tantalizingly close with the second and third chances.

So then Georgia, of course, though no sleek basketball machine itself, dribbled the length of the court, got fouled right on cue and won it with a pair of free throws.

It was just another carrot on the stick for LSU. A false alarm.

But it was historic.

It turned out that those 15 consecutive losses are an LSU record, breaking the previous mark of 14 done twice, in back-to-back years no less.

It came as a shock that the previous record predated the Pete Maravich era.

What? LSU played basketball before Pistol Pete?

Who knew? There’s scant evidence of anything hoops before the floppy socks, other than maybe a stray Bob Pettit.

But both the 1966 and ’67 teams managed 14 straight losses, the latter year with Maravich on campus, though sadly freshmen were not eligible for the varsity in those less enlightened times.

So LSU either gives up the game for Lent, if not for forever and a day, or this team might put that losing streak out there beyond what future generations could ever aspire to.

Did I mention that this will surely cost Johnny Jones his head coaching job even though everyone agrees he’s a swell guy?

I guess I didn’t.

Nobody does.

That’s the craziest thing about this remarkable season. It is the strangest ever run up to a coaching dismissal, certainly in LSU history.

Jones knows it. The fans know it. Athletic Director Joe Alleva knows it. The postgame media knows it, but doesn’t even bother to ask him about it anymore.

It’s hard to even get anything going on social media.

It’s just a foregone conclusion, not even worthy of stirring up Twitter.

Jones seemed to be an OK coach until he got the best player in America last year (I forget his name, Ben Simmons or something). Now Jones is accused of everything but putting ketchup on his steak.

If this was football, how many names would already be bouncing around the internet on next-coach speculation?

Thanksgiving before last this state basically shut down over a few rumors that Les Miles might be on the way out.

The difference might highlight the real basketball problem that LSU has right now.

Don’t fight it. Lent it.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com