LSU Basketball: Cameron Thomas excels in Tigers SEC opening win

Great effort defensively

At the beginning of Tuesday night’s game, I didn’t like the fact that the Tigers were taking so many risks defensively, but as the game went on the Tigers managed to settle in on that end of the floor.

It seemed like as soon as the Tigers became comfortable defending Texas A&M’s action, they were able to apply pressure on the Aggies and force them to take challenging jump shots repeatedly. Additionally, even when the help side and defense rotations weren’t always on time, the Tigers consistently stuck with plays and recovered as quickly as they could.

For example, Texas A&M’s first offensive possession of the second half consisted of Andre Gordon zipping a pass over to Emanuel Miller (who was standing a few steps in front of the left block), Miller lobbing a pass up to Kevin Marfo (who was standing on the right block), and Marfo allowing Darius Days to knock the ball out of bounds.

Days was only able to prevent Marfo from converting a layup at the rim because he played hard even when he made a defensive error. Days was supposed to rotate down to the right block and defend Marfo as Gordon’s pass was traveling over to Miller, but Days must have forgotten that his responsibility was to help out Mwani Wilkinson on the backside, who had to choose between going over to guard Miller and going over to guard Marfo (and he chose to guard Miller).

Despite making that defensive mistake, Days sprinted over to the right block to defend Marfo as Miller was throwing a lob to him, and because Days remained disciplined when he arrived at Marfo’s location (or in other words, because he didn’t leave his feet to try and swat Marfo’s layup attempt), Days made Marfo think twice about rising up and finishing over him (which allowed Days to knock the ball out of bounds).

Sometimes when you find yourself out of position defensively, you don’t want to go all out and try to send your opponent’s shot into the fourth row when you finally recover. Why? Well, because your opponent will simply wait for you to make contact with them, go up strong with either hand and give themselves around a 60% chance or better of making a layup while dealing with contact. I think that because Days comprehends this completely, he simply decided to stunt at Marfo so that his layup attempt would be delayed by 2-3 seconds (which worked out for Days in the end).

There was another early second-half possession that is worth noting, which included Quenton Jackson coming off of a ball-screen, and swinging a pass over to Savion Flagg (who was wide-open on the left-wing at the time). Ja’Vonte Smart was supposed to be defending Flagg during the possession, but he got caught in no man’s land which probably led Flagg to believe that he would be able to launch an uncontested three.

However, although Smart isn’t necessarily considered a speedster, his closing speed on that possession was remarkable, which allowed him to put a hand in Flagg’s face as he was letting a three-pointer fly (and Flagg winded up missing the three). Effort plays like the two I just described are why the Tigers didn’t allow the Aggies to reach 60 points on Tuesday night.

I don’t anticipate that the Tigers will fall asleep defensively a lot in the future, but if they do, expect them to make up for it in a hurry, and show Will Wade that they will not give up on plays.