There’s no sugarcoating how disappointing coach Matt McMahon’s first season in Baton Rouge was.
The LSU men’s basketball team went just 2-16 in SEC play, losing 14 in a row at one point. With the best player from that group in [autotag]KJ Williams[/autotag] moving on and several contributors opting to enter the transfer portal, the Tigers had to be aggressive in landing several portal acquisitions of their own.
With a major haul of players, LSU will enter the 2023-24 team with a very different roster as McMahon hopes to get things going in the right direction. The Tigers were named a winner in the transfer portal by On3.
C Will Baker (Nevada), C Daimion Collins (Kentucky), PG Jalen Cook (Tulane), C Hunter Dean (George Washington), G Carlos Stewart (Santa Clara), SF Jordan Wright (Vanderbilt)
The skinny: LSU needed to rehaul its roster after last season. In year two of the Matt McMahon era, the Tigers brought in talent. An interesting piece; a lot of the guys they brought in from the portal are homegrown. Jalen Cook, Carlos Stewart, Hunter Dean, and Jordan Wright are all originally from Louisiana. Cook, who started at LSU under Will Wade, finished top five in the AAC in points, assists, and steals last season. He was first-team All-AAC. Stewart, a Baton Rouge native, was first-team All-WCC last season after averaging 15.2 points and shooting 40.3 percent from three. A third incoming perimeter player, and former high school teammate of Stewart, Wright scored over 1,100 career points at Vanderbilt. Will Baker is a former top-40 recruit, and Daimion Collins is a former top-20 recruit. This LSU roster brought in an influx of talent.
Remaking your roster through the portal is always a gamble, but we’ve seen several programs achieve a lot of recent success doing just that. LSU will hope it’s the latest in Year 2 under McMahon.
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