College Hoops Today: Newbies Pushing LSU to Relevance

This week, for the first time in school history, Arizona is the unanimous No. 1 ranked team in the country; Xavier’s Malik Messina-Moore has really picked up his play over the last few games; and Gus Yalden continues to put up a ton of shots for Vermont. Other college basketball stories we’re tracking include…

Dedan Thomas Jr. Returns

Since finishing 21 games over .500 back in 2018-19, it’s been nearly all downhill for the Louisiana State Tigers. The team showed modest improvement in 2023-24, but the regression continued last season when they won just 14 games, missing the tournament for a third straight time.

And with so few returnees this season (just 18.4 per of last season’s minutes are back), it was hard to know what to expect even with a very strong transfer class.

Well, the new blood has definitely breathed life into the program as the Tigers roared out to an 8-0 start and were 12-1 heading into SEC play. Unfortunately, much like last season, conference play has been a slog. LSU dropped its first four conference games before finally beating Missouri on Saturday, moving the school just one win away from matching last season’s total.

On Tuesday, LSU lost again at No. 16 Florida to drop to 1-5 in SEC play, but the good news is that one of the most important Tiger transfers – junior point guard Dedan Thomas Jr. – returned to action after missing the last five games with an injury.

Never mind that he struggled badly in his first game action in three weeks (1-for-8 from the field for two points with just three assists and two boards in just 17 minutes off the bench). Thomas is so important to the LSU turnaround, leading the team in scoring this season after coming over from UNLV. He’s actually not canning as many hoops this season as he doesn’t play virtually the entire game like he did with the Running Rebels (see video below for some highlights of his work last year with Las Vegas), but he’s been more efficient with his touches while also leading the team in assists.

For perspective, in his last game before getting hurt, Thomas went off for 22 points with 12 assists, so you can see how vital he is to the Tiger attack. He just has such a big impact on this team, so now that he’s shaken the rust off, let’s see how well LSU does during the remainder of conference play.

Thomas really knows how to drive offense, make shrewd plays and use his high BB IQ, and while he’s not currently considered an NBA draft candidate, as an UDFA he could find a role on a pro team. Small, pass-first guards can still carve out solid careers occasionally (think Mike Conley Jr.).

Notre Dame On the Rise

Since bottoming out at 11-21 in 2022-23, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish have slowly but surely been building the program back up. They added two wins in 2023-24 and another two last season. And so far this season, they have been playing winning basketball thanks to an excellent 9-3 start.

Unfortunately, the Irish lost their last non-conference game, but started ACC play with a win over Stanford. Since then, Notre Dame has dropped four straight and things don’t get any easier Wednesday as it has a date in Chapel Hill against No. 22 UNC (the Irish are 11.5 point underdogs as per FanDuel).

There hasn’t been much to get stoked about during conference play for Notre Dame so far, but the breakout game by freshman big Brady Koehler on Saturday qualifies as a real highlight.

He tied a career high by playing 22 minutes off the bench, going off for career-bests in points (a team-high 17 on 5-of-7 shooting) and FTs made (five), while tying personal highs in treys (two), assists (one) and steals (two). Koehler has played exclusively off the bench so far, but he’s shown a great touch from downtown with some rebounding potential.

He’s got some older dudes ahead of him on the depth chart, but more efforts like this could allow him to take some PT away from sophomore Garrett Sundra, who has shot poorly this season. Koehler has NBA potential thanks to his versatility, perhaps as a Mikal Bridges type.

RotoRob Tune of the Day

American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was one of the all-time greats, active from 1933 until 1976, six years before his death. Probably his most notable song ever was “’Round Midnight,” originally recorded in 1943, and included on the 1987 compilation, A Sample of Blue Notes.