Taking advantage of the most navigable stretch of SEC play, the Texas Longhorns are in the midst of a four-game winning streak as the last-place LSU Tigers come to the Moody Center on Tuesday.
The winning streak, which has featured Quad 1 road wins over Oklahoma and Missouri, has moved first-year head coach Sean Miller’s team off the NCAA Tournament bubble and increased the team’s odds of going dancing up to 81.5 percent, according to Bart Torvik.
With a win probability of 78 percent on Tuesday, it’s
the most winnable game left on the schedule for the Longhorns — and comparable to the regular-season finale against the Sooners in Austin. In between, the schedule stiffens again with road games against Georgia, Texas A&M, and Arkansas, and a home game against SEC-leading Florida.
“Every night in this league is a tough test and we’re looking to build on some recent good play,” Miller said on Monday.
LSU arrives in Austin with fourth-year head coach Matt McMahon on the hot seat with the Tigers at 2-10 in conference play and set to miss the tournament for the fourth time in his tenure in Baton Rouge.
Four players average double-digit scoring for LSU, all part of a transfer portal class that McMahon hoped would help the Tigers bounce back from a 14-18 record last season. Instead, wins have been hard to come by in SEC play despite the contributions of players like leading scorer Dedan Thomas Jr., a UNLV transfer who is leading the team with 15.3 points and 6.5 assists per game. Unfortunately for LSU, Thomas won’t be available for the Tigers on Tuesday, along with forward Jalen Reed.
Former Elon and Porland sharpshooter Max Mackinnon leads LSU in made three-pointers and averages 14.5 points per game, but overall, the Tigers struggle to shoot from distance, making just 32.1 percent of their three-point attempts.
LSU is capable of getting to the free-throw line, ranking No. 43 in free-throw rate thanks to forwards Marquel Sutton, Mike Nwoko, and Pablo Tamba.
Defensively, the Tigers struggle to defend the three-point lane, allowing opponents to shoot 35.4 percent from beyond the arc, and don’t force turnovers.
For the third straight game, the Longhorns will be without forward Lassina Traore, who is still experiencing soreness in his surgically-repaired knee. On Monday, Miller said that the Xavier transfer is day-to-day.
With Traore out, sophomore forward Nic Codie moved into the rotation and made an impact in the road win over Missouri, scoring nine points on 4-of-5 shooting while grabbing six rebounds, three offensive, in his 15 minutes of action.
Tip is at 8 p.m. Central on SEC Network.
