2:02 pm | March 23, 2019 | Go to Source | Author:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — LSU could feel all their haters out there, even though the Tigers could not see them. They said it all week in Jacksonville, and they said it again even louder after beating Maryland with a heart-stopping last-second lay-in Saturday afternoon that gave Tremont Waters his own special place in March Madness history.
“They didn’t even pick us to beat Yale!” screamed Emmitt Williams across the locker room. “A lot of people counted us out,” Javonte Smart said.
It became convenient to pick against the Tigers after a month filled with uncertainty threatened to sink what had otherwise been a dominant season. After blowing a 15-point second half lead, perhaps some who doubted felt they might be vindicated. But LSU, which had played in so many close games all season long, huddled up and decided Waters would be the guy with the ball in his hands for the game-winning shot.
“What was designed is what happened,” assistant Greg Heiar said with a huge smile on his face. “Tre made a real unbelievable play.”
Waters went inside off a screen from Naz Reid, then worked his way around Jalen Smith and threw the ball up toward the rim. It swished through with 1.6 seconds remaining and LSU won 69-67 to advance to their first Sweet 16 since 2006. That also happens to be the last time LSU made the Final Four.
Waters found himself at the bottom of a celebratory dog pile when the last whistle sounded.
“Just the feeling,” he said afterward. “It feels amazing.”
Interim coach Tony Benford now finds himself in rare territory: Steve Fisher is the only other interim coach to take a program this far. And Fisher led Michigan to the national championship in 1989.
What it took to get to this point is a separate story in itself. LSU rolled to a Top 10 ranking and had its eyes on the SEC championship. Then reports surfaced in early March that coach Will Wade was caught on a wiretap discussing a possible payment to a player and the narrative shifted dramatically.
Benford, then an assistant coach, was on the road recruiting at the state basketball tournament in St. Charles, La., the day the story broke. He returned to LSU that night, and the next day LSU’s athletic director suspended Wade and tapped Benford as interim coach.
Benford assured his players nothing would change. Outsiders raised an eyebrow in skepticism.
“I know a lot of people didn’t believe in him,” Smart said. “Since we didn’t have Coach Wade, they expected us to fall. But we have faith in him, and we have faith in each other. He just talked to us and said, ‘We’re going to keep going. We’re going to keep attacking.'”
LSU went out one night later and clinched the SEC regular-season title, and the Tigers did it without both Wade and Smart, the freshman who was held out of the game while the school investigated whether he was involved in what Wade was caught on tape saying. Smart was cleared for the SEC tournament, but the Tigers lost to Florida, and suddenly this team had many questioning not only just how far Benford could take the team, but whether the team should play in the NCAA tournament at all.
Wade has not sat down to talk with LSU officials, so he remains suspended and back home in Baton Rouge, La. Meanwhile, his coaches and players have had to discuss the distractions, their feelings about the whole situation and Benford himself.
Benford was the first assistant Wade hired when he took over LSU in 2017. Though Benford never had a winning season in five years as head coach at North Texas, he’s earned respect from coaches across the country for his tireless recruiting and ability to build relationships with his players.
LSU players say they have responded to him because he listens to them, and he also listens to his fellow assistants.
“Coach Benford says he has no ego in this game,” Waters says.
At every turn, Benford has shifted the focus away from him and toward his players.
“It’s huge for these guys,” Benford said about advancing to the Sweet 16. “They’re the ones that paid the price. They’ve been through a lot. We know the story of adversity these guys have gone through.”
Even before Wade was suspended, the players rallied together after teammate Wayde Sims was shot and killed in September. They wear a patch on their jerseys honoring him. Skylar Mays wears his number and the day he died on his shoes, as a reminder that what LSU is doing is bigger than all of them combined.
Benford himself has guided his players without being overbearing or imposing his will.
“He’s been thrown in the fire, thrown to the wolves and we’re doing everything we can to help him out,” Darius Days said. “We’re not giving him a hard time, we’re taking care of business. I’m happy that we have him. Even though we don’t have our real head coach, he stepped in, he took care of business and now we’ve got to take care of business for him on the court.”
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Tremont Waters says his team gave him the confidence to make the game-winning layup vs. Maryland and send LSU into the Sweet 16.
Benford gave Waters the ability to run the offense, or the keys to the team, as the players say. So it was no surprise that final play would come down to Waters.
“It was there all game, and I told coach, I said ‘Coach we’ve got this, I see what it is,'” Heiar said. “When you’re in those situations you want to have a play that works against man or zone. The middle was wide open against that zone, so we wanted to come out and have a play that would work against man or zone.”
Heiar says Waters’ eyes lit it up when they told him the play was for him. And as it unfolded, and teammates watched, they all believed. Maybe because nobody else did.
“God made the ball go in,” Waters said in the celebratory locker room. “Wayde Sims made the ball go in.”
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