15. LSU Tigers
2024-25 Record: 14-18 (3-15 SEC)
Last season, LSU had its season derailed due to injuries. Forward Jalen Reed (11.1 ppg) was the Tigers’ best interior scorer before missing all but eight games to injury. Luckily for Matt McMahon, Reed is returning to Baton Rouge this season. While Reed, on his own, won’t turn this LSU team into a competitive team, when healthy, he does raise the floor for what it can achieve.
To help combat the losses of leading scorers Cam Carter and Jordan Sears, McMahon loaded up his roster with transfer portal additions who lit up the mid-major ranks - adding five players who all averaged between 11 and 19 points per game. Leading this group is Marquel Sutton (18.9 ppg), last year's Summit Player of the Year, and Rashad King (18.5 ppg), the second leading scorer in the CAA.
To me, this LSU roster screams Mid-Major All-Stars, which isn’t necessarily a great thing for a team playing in the top conference in the country. Jalen Reed has proven he’s capable of playing against elite talent, but the rest of the roster is virtually untested against P5 schools. But on the positive side, McMahon signed a ton of scoring from the portal. Which could provide some huge offense upside - but I’ll need to see all the pieces mesh before I’m sold on the roster as a whole.
Compared to where McMahon and LSU were to end last season, this year's roster could easily be better. As mentioned before, the offense has a high ceiling, but I doubt the defense will be all that capable of slowing down too many opponents. Fortunately for the Tigers, LSU has a pretty weak first month of games, so there should be plenty of time to work out the kinks. This is one team I look forward to seeing later in the season, but for right now, I don’t have high expectations for the Tigers.
Since taking over at LSU, McMahon has struggled to stack up wins. He has yet to take his team to the NCAA Tournament, and his best record was 17-16 two seasons ago. I don’t know if this will be the team to turn things around in Baton Rouge, but I do know that offensively, they could be fun to watch.