Scouting the Opposition: Ole Miss Men’s Basketball Travels to face LSU Wednesday Night

BATON ROUGE — The No. 22-ranked Ole Miss Rebels (15-1, 2-1 SEC) begin their third week of SEC play with a trip to Baton Rouge to take on the LSU Tigers (10-6, 2-1 SEC) on Wednesday night.

The Rebels are coming off an undefeated week in conference play as they took down both the Florida Gators and, most recently, the Vanderbilt Commodores at home. Because of these wins, Ole Miss is back in the rankings for the second time this year, sitting at No. 22 in the AP Poll and No. 21 in the Coaches Poll.  

The LSU Tigers are coming off a 1-1 week where they defeated Vanderbilt, 77-69, at home and lost to the 13th-ranked Auburn Tigers, 93-78, on The Plains Saturday night. This is a much-improved LSU team who finished with a 2-16 record in conference play last year. The Tigers have already tied their total conference wins from last year with victories over Vanderbilt and a huge victory against Texas A&M in College Station. LSU will look to continue its much-improved season with a win against a ranked Ole Miss squad. 

We welcome you to our ongoing series, “Scouting the Opposition” as we take a look at LSU. 

Who are the LSU Tigers?

The LSU Tigers, who are 96th in the NET Rankings, are led by Coach Matt McMahon who is in his second season at the helm. McMahon, who was previously the coach at Murray State, is the third-winningest coach in Murray State history.

McMahon’s current LSU team is one that is very battle tested. The Tigers played a very difficult non-conference slate against teams like Texas, Wake Forest, Dayton, Syracuse, and Kansas St. Coupled with playing two of the top SEC teams, Auburn and Texas A&M, LSU has played one of the most difficult schedules in the country.

The Tigers’ Q1 wins consist of an away victory against Texas A&M and a neutral-court victory over Wake Forest. However, they boast a 1-2 record in Q2 games, and a 0-1 record in Q3 games. In addition, they have a bad Q4 loss to Nicholls St. Below is the breakdown of their quad wins/losses:

Q1: 2-2

Q2: 1-2

Q3: 0-1

Q4: 7-1

Ole Miss and LSU share two common opponents, Vanderbilt and Alabama State. Each team met the Commodores last week at home, and they were able to beat Vandy with ease in both games. Each game was close for a few minutes; however, it didn’t take much time for LSU and Ole Miss to get out in front.

The same goes for the second common opponent, Alabama State. Ole Miss played the Hornets in their first game of the season and it was one of their few non-conference games that did not go down to the wire as the Rebels won 69-59. LSU also played host to the Hornets and won convincingly, 74-56.

Scouting the Tigers:

In the SEC, guard play is crucial for any team to have success. Florida and Vanderbilt were both led by two star guards, and LSU is no different. LSU is led by two Baton Rouge natives, Jalen Cook and Jordan Wright.

Cook, the junior guard, hailing from Walker, Louisiana, is actually a two-time transfer to LSU. Jalen Cook started his collegiate career with LSU in 2020. After the 20-21 season, Cook decided to transfer to Tulane, where he would play his next two seasons of college basketball. However, Cook transferred back to LSU to play his junior season.

As a two time transfer, Cook was ineligible to play for the first 10 games of the season. After being deemed eligible from the NCAA’s ruling about two-time transfers, Cook, the six foot guard, became the Tiger’s leading scorer, averaging 15 points, 4 rebounds, and 3 assists per game.

The LSU offense goes as Cook goes. Since Cook has returned, the Tigers are 5-2 and playing their best basketball all season. With him, the Tigers average 82.6 PPG and without him, they average 73 PPG. He is a three-level scorer who is very dangerous in the half court set as he loves to drive to the basket and shoot threes. 

Similar to his backcourt counterpart, Jordan Wright is also a Baton Rouge native. Wright started his collegiate career with Vanderbilt. He was a four-year player at Vanderbilt and decided to transfer home to finish his final year of college.

Wright, a six-foot-five guard, also shares the leading-scorer title with Jalen Cook. He averages 15 points, fiev rebounds, and two assists per game. I cannot say this enough: both of these guards love to get to the rim and score in the paint. LSU is the fourth-best team in the conference at paint-points-per-game as well as the second-best team at percentage of points in the paint. This is due to the ability of Wright and Cook to get to the basket. In addition, LSU as a team shoots 80% from the free throw line. So if Cook and Wright aren’t able to score, they could easily draw a foul and get their two points the old fashioned way.

As the primary ball handlers on the team, Cook and Wright do turn the ball over quite a bit. In fact, LSU is dead last in the conference in turnover percentage, turnovers per game, and assist-to-turnover ratio. This was especially prevalent during their most recent game against Auburn when they turned the ball over 16 times. A majority of the turnovers come during drives to the basket, when the other team strips the ball from the guard’s hand, while another large percentage of turnovers come from lazy passes. While LSU does score a ton, they are 11th in the SEC in offensive rating largely due to their poor turnover rates. 

Outside of Jalen Cook and Jordan Wright, the Tigers’ third-best player is 6-foot-11 center Will Baker. Baker, a senior from Austin, TX, is your prototypical hustle player. I happen to love what Baker brings to the court. He blocks shots, rebounds, dives for the loose ball, and can even spread the floor and shoot the three. He has excellent footwork, and has a knack for scoring around the rim with his 12 PPG average.

Defensively, Baker is a menace when it comes to other teams entering his paint. LSU is the best in the SEC when it comes to defending opponents’ scoring and scoring percentage in the paint, and Baker plays a huge part in that. However, even though Baker is six-foot-eleven, his LSU team is not the best rebounding group in the world, coming in 9th in the SEC. This bodes very well for Ole Miss as the Rebs also struggle in that same category. 

Outside of Baker, Cook, and Wright — LSU’s only double-figure scorers — the Tigers also get a ton of points from their bench unit. LSU’s bench is led by senior guard Tre Hannibal and sophomore forward Jalen Reed. Hannibal and Reed lead the 25th-best bench unit in the entire country. The unit as a whole averages 28 ppg compared to Ole Miss’ bench unit which averages 13 ppg. Ole Miss ranks 331st in the nation in bench scoring. A big key for LSU would be to get the Rebels into foul trouble as they have problems scoring from outside their starting five. 

Defensively, LSU is ranked much better than they are offensively. Their defensive unit is ranked 4th in the SEC, and their backbone is forcing teams to turn the ball over. LSU is the best team in the SEC when it comes to steals as they are averaging 9 steals per game. In their victory against Vandy, they stole the ball from Vanderbilt a staggering 11 times.

LSU has three different players in the top 12 in the SEC in steals. Jordan Wright is in the top 5 with an average of 2.1 per game, while back-up point guard Mike Williams III is top 10, and Tre Hannibal is top 12 in the SEC.

Other than steals, LSU forces its opponents to shoot 38% from the field. Opponents really do not shoot the three-ball well against this Tiger team. Opponents average 27% from behind the arc, which is the second-best 3-point defensive percentage in the SEC. What makes this even more impressive is teams actually take a ton of threes against the Tigers. LSU gives up 27 three points per game to its opponents. So the fact that other teams shoot so poor on so many shots is a testament to Coach McMahon’s defense. 

Style of Play:

Let’s start on the offensive end. As the primary ball handlers, Cook and Wright love to play in the half court. They typically slow play down and like to be in control of what is going on on the court. LSU plays a good amount of iso basketball as the Tigers look for their guards to make a move on the perimeter in order to try to get into the paint to score. There is not much ball movement in their half-court sets as they are one of the worst teams in the nation in assist percentage.

In addition to their half-court offense, LSU does not take a ton of threes; rather, they score a large majority of their points inside the arc. They are good for second in the SEC in two-point FGAs. 

Theme for the game

I’ll post my ‘keys to the game’ on X 45 minutes before tip off, so be sure and  click here to follow me on X.  I do want to point out a theme for this game which is: strengths vs. weaknesses. While going into Baton Rouge is tough for any Ole Miss team, the Rebels’ strengths line up very well against LSU’s weaknesses.

Here are just a few I noticed:

1. LSU loves to give its opponent 3-point looks. Ole Miss converts 3 pointers at a staggering rate of 40%. This is good for Top 25 in the country.
2. LSU loves to drive to the basket. Ole Miss loves to block shots and use its size to their advantage.
3. LSU turns the ball over a ton. Recently, Ole Miss loves to speed the pace of play up and run on other teams. Ole Miss especially loves to run on transition offense after a turnover. 

Game Info

Make sure to catch the Ole Miss Rebels Wednesday night as they take on the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge at 6pm CST. The game will be aired on the SEC Network.