There was hardly any time for the LSU men’s basketball team to celebrate a huge road win Saturday night against Texas A&M.
There was reason for joy, of course, when the Tigers snapped a 13-game losing streak in true road games — which came out loud and clear from behind the metal door of their locker room in Reed Arena after a 68-53 blowout of the Aggies.
After winning twice in Southeastern Conference play a year ago, the feeling of beating Texas A&M with a solid game plan and the execution needed to top a team that was ranked 12th in mid-November was not to be denied.
Not in the locker room. Not on the plane ride home.
But at some point Sunday, realization kicked in when LSU returned to the practice floor on a mostly quiet campus.
After topping Texas A&M — the media’s preseason pick to finish second in the SEC race for the second consecutive year — LSU would have to forget it and begin preparing for the next game just 70 hours after dispatching the Aggies.
That comes at 8 p.m. Tuesday when LSU (9-5, 1-0 SEC) takes on Vanderbilt (5-9, 0-1 SEC) in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The game will be televised by the SEC Network.
Vanderbilt opened league play with a 77-73 loss to Alabama in Nashville on Saturday.
In the closing seconds of his news conference late Saturday night, Matt McMahon wasn’t going to douse the excitement he had heard in the locker room. He reminded the media the Tigers’ job is not finished — it’s just beginning with 17 SEC games to go.
“It’s just one game,” he said. “I mean, I'm excited about it and I’m really proud of our team. But the goal is just to keep getting better. It's a long season.”
For reference, all you have to do is go back to last year at this time.
After a promising 11-1 nonconference start led to a 60-57 victory over then-No. 9 Arkansas in its SEC opener, 14 consecutive losses followed — 13 in league play.
But, as McMahon quickly points out, last season has nothing to do with the nine new scholarship players on this year's roster.
The current Tigers have built much confidence in the 3½ weeks since point guard Jalen Cook was allowed to suit up, starting with the second half of a 96-85 loss to Texas.
“He’s made everyone else better,” McMahon said. “Our guys have really bought into the work that it takes to just keep getting better.”
The improvement has been most evident in the Tigers’ scoring and their assist-to-turnover ratio.
After 10 games, they were averaging 74.1 points a game and had a 0.72 assist-to-turnover ratio.
In the past three games, two of which were against overmatched nonconference foes, they’ve averaged 87.0 points with an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.65.
Defensive rebounding and guarding the 3-point line have also improved dramatically.
“We’re not a finished product by any means, but I think we've made a lot of progress in those areas,” McMahon said. “So it gave us an opportunity to get this nice win.”
Winning the SEC opener on the road was a major goal for Tigers guard Jordan Wright, who played for Vanderbilt for four seasons before coming home for a Covid bonus season.
While the team has taken a step forward lately, Wright, who was named Monday co-SEC player of the week, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Cook’s playmaking skills.
After a bit of a transition period, Wright has hit his stride going into the first of two meetings with his old team.
In the past three games, he’s 16 of 36 from the field and averaged 15.0 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists a game.
But the only thing on Wright’s mind Tuesday night will be a 2-0 start in league play.
“Honestly, we didn’t play as well as we wanted to … the record wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be,” he said of last year’s LSU team. “I think we have the added hunger and desire to go out there and play the way we know we're capable of.”
They’ve done it once, but, as McMahon suggested, they have to keep doing it.