Men’s Hoops Takes Two out of Three in Charleston

The LSU men’s basketball team spent the majority of last week in Charleston, and the results were a mixed bag for the Tigers (3-2).

Going in chronological order means starting with LSU’s 70-67 loss to Dayton on Thursday. In a back and forth game that featured seven ties and 14 lead changes, LSU’s offense was held scoreless for the final 1:25 of the game and Dayton hit what proved to be the game-winning three with less than five seconds to play.

Barely 24 hours later, LSU was back out on the TD Arena court, this time against North Texas. The Tigers held on to the tune of a 66-62 win over the Mean Green. If the Dayton game was close, this North Texas game had even more drama with 22 lead changes and nine ties.

LSU had Saturday off and on Sunday the Tigers took on Wake Forest in the fifth place game of the Charleston Classic. Much like the baseball game between these schools, this game also went into overtime but LSU prevailed with an 86-80 over the Deacons.

At 3-2—and those two losses coming by a combined five points—I have no idea if LSU is any good or not. They probably aren’t and that’s okay. Are they better than last year’s group? Probably? But that’s a very low bar to clear.

We’ll get a better idea just how good LSU is over the next month as LSU has to go to Syracuse (November 28), play Kansas State in the PMAC (December 9) and takes on Texas in Houston (December 16). Kansas State and Texas are both top-20 teams in the NET rankings.