A pair of Southeastern Conference men’s basketball coaches have discovered in recent weeks that playing second fiddle to football has its advantages.
Will Wade’s LSU Tigers, who won last year’s SEC regular-season championship, have been erratic entering Saturday’s league opener at Tennessee. LSU has nonconference losses to VCU, Utah State, East Tennessee State and Southern California – a quartet producing respectable seasons – but not many people have noticed.
Wade’s Tigers have been overshadowed by Ed Orgeron’s football program that won its first SEC title in eight years and will face Clemson for the national championship in New Orleans on Jan. 13.
“It’s been great for us, because nobody is worried that we’re 8-4,” Wade said this week. “Hopefully, we’ll have a few conference wins by the time everybody gets back from the national championship game and they start worrying about basketball. It’s been very, very good for us.”
The SEC opens Saturday with five head-to-head matchups and three teams facing nonconference foes. The most notable of the three nonconference contests is Georgia’s trip to Memphis in a game that was supposed to include freshman phenoms James Wiseman of the host Tigers and Anthony Edwards of the Bulldogs.