GAME DAY 6 SCHEDULE:
Tuesday
Auburn @ South Carolina on the SEC Network, 5:30 CST
Mississippi State @ Kentucky on ESPN, 6 p.m.
Texas A&M @ Florida on the SEC Network, 7:30 p.m.
Ole Miss @ Alabama on ESPNU, 8 p.m.
Wednesday
Tennessee @ Vanderbilt on ESPN2, 6 p.m.
Georgia @ LSU on the SEC Network, 6 p.m.
Missouri @ Arkansas on the SEC Network, 8 p.m.
CHATTIN' IT UP
• LSU now is ranked (No. 25) for the first time since Thanksgiving — just before the team lost games to Florida State, Oklahoma State and Houston in the span of two weeks. That was then. Coach Will Wade believes his team has matured a bit since the conference season began. "You've gotta double-down with what you do," he said Monday. "You've gotta be tougher with what you do. You've gotta be better with your details. You've gotta be better with how hard you compete. You've gotta be better with how connected you are as a group. All that stuff's gotta be better. And hopefully we've learned from the first go-around with this because we handled it very, very poorly the first go-around."
The key here is senior transfer F Kavell Bigby-Williams, who was named the SEC's Player of the Week for notching double-doubles in victories against Ole Miss and South Carolina. His emergence has taken pressure off freshman PF Naz Reid in the post and gives PG Tremont Waters another competent finishing opinion when LSU gets moving in transition. "I watch him work. Everything he's doing in games, he's been working on," Reid said of Bigby-Williams. "He's getting his sweat in. That's exactly what he's supposed to be doing."
• SOUTH CAROLINA came down to earth a bit in Baton Rouge last weekend. The Gamecocks suffered their first conference loss against LSU (89-67) in a game that left coach Frank Martin a bit peeved. "They kicked our tail," he said. "It was the first time in a while where we (didn't) fight defensively and we (didn't) execute on offense." Martin responded by holding a grueling, physical practice on Sunday aimed at getting his team "connected" on the defensive end. Auburn plays in Columbia tonight.
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• KENTUCKY moved into the SEC's top three after its victory inside Auburn Arena Saturday. The Wildcats' 82-80 win was sealed when Auburn PG Jared Harper missed on a drive with five seconds remaining. Former Auburn coach Tony Barbee, now the top assistant at Kentucky, says the Wildcats accomplished what they'd intended during that final sequence. "We had to get him off the three-point line," Barbee said Monday. "He's not as efficient in that mid-range area because of his size. We wanted him going left, not going to his right, and fortunately for us he missed ... because he had a clean look."
• OLE MISS, which lost its first conference game of the season last Tuesday against LSU, knows things will be difficult in Tuscaloosa tonight. The Tide didn't capitulate until the final minute of its loss at top-ranked Tennessee on Saturday. "A lot of teams, Tennessee has just kind of pile-drived through. Alabama kind of withstood a great run," Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said Monday. "Their team really guarded at a high level, matched Tennessee’s physicality. If it wasn’t for the free-throw line, Alabama should have won the game.”
Also of note, G Devontae Shuler came off the bench for the first time this season during the Rebels' weekend win against Arkansas. The sophomore is struggling with a stress reaction in his left foot and didn't practice Sunday, though Davis said Shuler is expected to play tonight.
