Eaux-fer?

"This is my mad stance. Can you feel it?" A confluence of contradiction is a-brewin' in the delta. As we approach the halfway point in another riveting season of SEC basketball, Kentucky is poised for a run at the league title and beyond, behind what many consider one of the greatest assemblages of pure talent the league has ever seen. Then, there's LSU, quite possibly the worst team in SEC history. Hyperbole, you say? Have you watched them play? Indeed, last year's SEC Champs sit 0-8 in league play and even that fails to illustrate just how disastrous this team truly is. The Tigers are averaging an appalling 56 ppg in the league, including a 38 point "effort" in Tuscaloosa a couple weeks ago which will likely serve as their signature loss. Not surprisingly, they are dead last in pretty much any offensive category you care to dig up, highlighted by a 38% FG and 24% from 3. Without regard for the pun, that is just plain offensive. Dale Brown must be rolling over in his sarcophagi. How does a school like LSU, situated in the heart of the nation's Athletic Belt, produce a product so inept, so, WHITE? And in the post-John Brady era, of all the eras. Trent Johnson may resemble a peragrine falcon but he proved last season he could coach and recruited well in his previous gigs, but watch LSU and it looks like a team in the throws of probation. Or intramural runner-ups, take your pick. The SEC has produced its share of duds over the years, but only two schools in the conference's history have been perfectly awful, and, perhaps without coincidence, neither still calls the SEC home. The last was Georgia Tech in '53-'54, and Sewanee posted a goose-egg 5 times in the 30's before they realized they'd be best served as a tiny D-III refuge for wealthy, hard-drinking Episcopalians (the only kind). A few teams in recent memory have threatened the dubious mark, including last year's Georgia squad who dropped their first 9 in league play before reeling off 3 wins to save a little face (yes, including that one). Seven teams have posted a single conference win, the last being Alabama in '68-'69. It truly takes an empty combination of talent and heart for a basketball team to go winless in conference, and LSU appears to have lots of neither. I guess the Temple family had to run out of strapping brood eventually. As the season winds down and most of the SEC half-assedly battles for the last few NIT slots, it's certainly easier to steal a win here or there. But I'm just not sure LSU can pull it off. If you can't eek out a win by this point in a league this bad, then nothing short of playing North Carolina is going to get it done. I really feel for Tasmin Mitchell---a Beyonce on a roster of destiny's step-children and a guy I believe could've found an NBA roster this season---suffer through such a disaster but he chose LSU over Kentucky, thus, pretty much begged for this. Sorry 'bout your luck, chief. So what does all this mean as it pertains to Saturday? Well, hopefully something like this.