Back at the beginning of time, before this certifiably crazy college basketball season opened, they were cover boys, and their team was the No. 1 choice of many. There was All-America guard Chris Jackson, set to encore his brilliant freshman year; there was the country`s newest freshman sensation, a 7-foot-1-inch center with the lyrical name of Shaquille O`Neal; and there was a surrounding cast talented enough to elicit nothing but superlatives for Louisiana State`s mighty Tigers.
But then, as it always does, reality intervened. They lost early to Kansas and looked poor, and were then upset in their Southeastern Conference opener by lowly Mississippi State. They were embarrassed again last Sunday at Alabama and finally reached a nadir on Wednesday when they gave one away at home in overtime to decidedly average Georgia.
”This may come as a shock to you, but I wasn`t surprised at all,” said LSU coach Dale Brown after that defeat. ”That may sound ludicrous, but something is missing on this team. It has no personality. I just haven`t been able to get a feeling for it. I haven`t been able to get a grasp. We need a spark. If we want to do anything, we better set the alarm immediately or this season will be a disaster.”
The Tigers` problems may not yet be as manifold as the Denver Broncos`, but as they await their own Super Sunday game with No. 5 Nevada-Las Vegas, they are clearly a club awry. So that meeting, which once loomed as a showdown between the two teams that shared the No. 1 ranking in the preseason, is now something else completely. It is now a chance for LSU to regain a measure of self-esteem.
It is a chance each of its players needs desperately, for each has contributed to the stumbling and bumbling. Yes, Jackson is averaging 28.3 points a game, close to the 30.2 he averaged as a freshman. But he has handed out only 40 assists while committing 61 turnovers, and a premier point guard puts up 2.5 of the former to every one of the latter.
O`Neal, the 17-year-old man-child (he turns 18 on March 6), has rebounded strongly (11.4 a game) and flashed good passing skills for a big man. But he is limited offensively despite his 15-point average and is shooting a paltry 51 percent from the line. (In the loss to Georgia, he missed three front-end free throws in the final seven minutes of regulation and two more in the overtime.)
O`Neal and 7-foot sophomore Stanley Roberts can create a yawning black hole that swallows up any who dare to tread inside, but both towers are prone to dumb fouls and foul trouble. Sophomore guard Maurice Williamson, who averaged nearly 40 points as a high school senior, can light a spark off the bench, but he too often plays out of control. Junior forward Wayne Sims, the elder statesman of this group, can clamp a tough defense on an opponent`s high scorer, but he has not been able to provide the leadership that comes with his role as co-captain.
A lack of leadership, in fact, is one theme that now permeates all these discussions by the Tigers, who also talk of lack of personality, lack of emotion and lack of consistency. No, each will claim, there is no dissension on this team. But, with their words, they certainly indicate a bubbling discontent that often accompanies unfulfilled expectations.
”Chris and myself, as captains, try to tell the other players to get themselves ready for every game,” says Sims. ”It helps in a way, but in some ways it doesn`t. If a guy doesn`t want to play, there`s nothing you can do. It`s frustrating, without a doubt.
”He (Brown) tells us we`re not emotional, that he doesn`t know how we`re feeling. It`s like some days we`re pepped up and some days we`re not pepped up. It`s like a roller coaster, and I guess when Coach says someone isn`t playing right, he has to put him on the bench.”
”Some nights we come to play, some night we don`t,” adds Jackson. ”We have All-Americans on paper, but that doesn`t mean anything. We have to prove it. Some guys have to practice extra, on their own. That`s what they`ve got to do. We should give the keys to the gym to all the players. We need that.”
”We need a leader,” O`Neal goes on. ”Sometimes we play with emotion. Sometimes we don`t. Why? I don`t know. That`s one of those mysteries.”
”What are we now, 12-4?” says Brown. ”I thought, with our schedule, we would be 12-4 with an intramural team. But this team has a certain coolness to it. It has less emotion than any I`ve ever coached. We`ve tried to play with this, and thought early that maybe this was just a mature team. But I told them then, anyone who played cool froze to death. And I think right now, we`re packed in dry ice.”
In hopes of thawing the Tigers, Brown promises lineup changes for the weekend, against Florida on Saturday and UNLV on Sunday. He hopes, too, that the meeting he convened at midnight Wednesday hastens that process and that the messages delivered then finally right his floundering team.
For two hours, until 2 a.m. Thursday, Brown and Jackson spoke, Sims and others spoke, and each addressed those problems all agree are plaguing them.
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”I think, I hope, the message is clear now,” Jackson says. ”But I`m still a little frustrated. We have a lot of problems to solve.”
Were the heightened expectations one of those problems?
”Probably. Some guys don`t take pressure as good as others. I don`t want to make excuses, but maybe some guys thought the ranking would do it for them. That doesn`t mean anything if you don`t go out and prove it. I don`t know. I`m just tired of talking. I just want to go out and win.”
”We all need maturity,” says Brown, ”and I don`t know when you get it. That`s pressure. Then when you see your picture in the paper enough times, that`s another pressure. We were ranked on top, another one. We virtually went into the season with colts that had a lot of pressure, and that`s tough.
”I tried to be prepared for it, but I wasn`t. I did not know it would be so much of an adjustment. Am I being unrealistic with a young team? Is this the way a young team plays until it gets experience? I don`t know.
”Last night, I thought (sophomore forward) Vernel Singleton said it best. He said last year, when we put out a poster, it said along the bottom,
`Hard work pays off.` That was our motto, and we should have put the same thing on this year`s poster. But you know what it said? `Standing out in the crowd.`
”Sometimes it`s just easier to rise from poverty than it is from affluence. This is new for us, and maybe I was looking for Easy Street. I`d lifted so many people, I`d lifted so many (underdog) teams, maybe I thought I could just sit on the bench.
”But I think last night we re-established what I already knew. I think they recognize now that we have a bull`s-eye on us, and that we just have to go after it stronger.”