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Men’s Basketball Concludes Regular Season at Missouri

One last tuneup for Will Wade and company before next week’s SEC Tournament

By Zach Junda
NCAA Basketball: Vanderbilt at Louisiana State Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports

As PodKatt eluded to yesterday the Les Miles story is abhorrent and we’re not going to ignore it. Writing for ATVS isn’t any of our day jobs, we all have day-to-day obligations, but we will talk about Miles and LSU’s failures as an institution.

The LSU men’s basketball team gets one last opportunity in the regular season to bolster its resumé as the Tigers travel to CoMo to take on the Tigers of Mizzou.

If you’ll remember, this game was supposed to have been played all the way back on January 9, but was postponed due to COVID issues surrounding Missouri’s program. Prior to the season starting, the SEC built in this specific weekend for makeup games. Now, nearly two months later, the two will finally get together with a chance to add another signature win to their respective resumés.

With LSU being ranked 28th in the NET, Saturday is a Quad-1 opportunity for Missouri; and since LSU is traveling to Missouri, currently ranked 39th in the NET, it’s a Quad-1 game for LSU as well. Missouri has fared better in its games against Q1 teams than LSU has: Missouri is 7-4 in 11 such games, while LSU is 3-7.

The other Tigers had a great start to the 2020-2021 season, picking up non-conference wins over Oregon, Wichita State, and Illinois. But it’s been SEC play where the Tigers have struggled, barely hovering above .500 at 8-7. Like LSU, February wasn’t too kind to Missouri as the Tigers went 3-4. While Missouri did beat Alabama, they also had a three-game losing skid.

As for LSU, the Tigers are playing for seeding in both next week’s SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. LSU’s already guaranteed a top-four finish in the SEC’s final standings and the coveted double-bye, but a win would lock up the No. 3 seed in the SEC Tournament. If LSU loses, they could still finish third in the SEC provided Tennessee beats Florida Sunday.

The bigger objective, of course, is seeding for the NCAA Tournament. LSU is still hovering around the 8/9 line, a win Saturday and perhaps winning just one game in Nashville could move them up to a 7-seed.

The regular season concludes at 1:00 and will be carried by the SEC Network.