Matt McMahon explains why he played more players than expected

Matt McMahon started his LSU career with a victory after the Tigers defeated Kansas City 74-63 inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center this week. As of now, though, LSU is still trying to gel, which was evident in the box score. 11 Tigers saw playing time and, in the end, McMahon was honest about the fact that it’s because he’s still figuring out his team.

McMahon shared his thoughts on his rotations during his postgame press conference on Wednesday. He said foul trouble did come into play but that his goal is to find his eight guys. In a game like that, he wanted to give all his players a shot at being amongst those eight.

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“I’m most comfortable playing eight guys. It’s what I’ve always done,” McMahon said. “But we had a lot of foul trouble in the first half. There’s also the challenge, and I know we need to quit talking about it, but we’ve got a bunch of new guys. And so (I was) trying to give players opportunities to get on the floor and show what kind of impact they can make. But we’ll continue to work on that in practice and get settled in as we go along.”

McMahon brought three of his former Murray State players with him to Baton Rouge. He also did his best to re-recruit and managed to get a Top-20 class to come play for him. Finally, he had players like Adam Miller and Mwani Wilkinson who elected to remain at LSU through the coaching change. That’s a lot of moving parts to piece together, even with a summer to get the ball rolling.

As McMahon said, the best thing for the Tigers is for them to continue to play together. A lot of the gelling will happen on its own as they play more and more. While that handles itself, McMahon can focus on his lineups and the team as a whole can focus on their next matchup against Arkansas State.