Gritty Gators spell trouble
Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, March 6, 2019
LSU seeks to avenge loss, extend win streak
Earlier this year, LSU coach Will Wade said Florida was just the type of sneaky team that would eventually end the Tigers’ surprising basketball season.
The season won’t end tonight when LSU visits Gainesville, but the Tigers will have to solve the Gators to stay atop the race for their first Southeastern Conference championship since 2009.
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“Gritty, grimy, tough, defensive-minded teams that are very physical,” Wade said in the defining what gives his teams problems.
Florida proved that two weeks ago with an 82-77 overtime victory in the Maravich Assembly Center.
“The way they throw us off rhythm,” Wade explained of what the Gators do. “You’re always out of rhythm. You can’t just dial stuff up all the time like when you’re in rhythm. You’ve got to be able to play out of rhythm and it takes a different type of team to be able to do that.”
But this one is a road game, when a win would be the first time in history the Tigers have gone 9-0 in SEC away games. Both conference losses came at home.
No. 10 LSU (24-5, 14-2 SEC) is tied atop the SEC with Tennessee, both one game ahead of Kentucky headed into the final week of the regular season. The Tigers beat both to gain the tiebreaker advantage over both.
“We’ve got to put in everything to winning Wednesday,” Wade said. “It’s a huge challenge moving forward because this is a team that has given us problems … we need to do it to do our next step, to try and win the first SEC title since 2009.”
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Florida (17-12, 9-7) owned a 21-7 edge in points off turnovers in the first meeting, which is uncharacteristic for the Tigers.
That wasn’t all.
“They beat us every which way you could beat us a couple weeks ago,” Wade said. “I got outcoached, we got outplayed. It was a total, total beat down. Total takedown from start to finish. They picked on mismatches out of timeouts. They killed us on baseline out of bounds. They played harder than us. It was just a total beat down. That was my fault for not having us ready and me not being as prepared as Coach (Mike) White was.
“We’re going to need to show that we’ve improved in the past two weeks and we’ve gotten better and that we can handle what they throw at us a lot better than we did.”
The Tigers haven’t lost since then, bouncing back to win three straight — an overtime victory over No. 5 Tennessee in the next game and adding wins over Texas A&M and Alabama since to jump to No. 10 in the most recent Associated Press Top 25 poll and as a No. 3 seed in the latest projections for the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve just got to keep getting better,” Wade said. “When you get up there, there’s a lot thinner margins. That’s not what we do it for.”
The Tigers will have star point guard Tremont Waters back at full strength. He missed two games with an undisclosed illness and was limited (by doctors) to 25 minutes coming off the bench against Alabama.
He’ll have no restrictions tonight, Wade said.
“I thought he was a little tentative (against Alabama), but for good reason,” Wade said. “He knew we were in good rhythm and he almost came in like he didn’t want to screw anything up. I told him, ‘We’ve been great with you all year. You’ve got to be aggressive and do what you do.’ He made some big plays for us at them end with his defensive steal. I thought he did a great job at the end of the game making plays.”
LSU guard Tremont Waters (3) drives to the basket against Furman guard Alex Hunter in the first half an NCAA college basketball game in Baton Rouge, La., Friday, Dec. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
