A star point guard's departure fuels speculation about the LSU Tigers' coaching carousel.
The busy day for LSU Tigers basketball gets even busier as star point guard Dedan Thomas Jr. plans to enter the transfer portal when it opens in early April, per Joe Tipton of On3 Sports.
Thomas was a high-profile addition from the UNLV Rebels last offseason by Matt McMahon to make him the engine of the offense this year. The plan worked great in non-conference play, but a foot injury suffered right before SEC play began derailed the year.
The point guard will now end his Tigers career having played in 16 games and averaging 15.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and a career-high 6.5 assists. He shot 45.9/30.2/83.3 splits.
LSU went 12-1 in the non-conference games played with a healthy Thomas. They lost all three of the SEC games that he came back for and tried to help turn the season around. In the end, they had to shut his season down early.
The plan had been that Thomas would come back next year and McMahon could continue to run the offense through him, trying to put the final pieces together in the portal.
Now, amid reports that the Tigers are leaning towards firing McMahon after four seasons and bringing back Will Wade, Thomas decides to enter the portal. This could be further confirmation that LSU is indeed making a change at coach, or it could just be a player who was planning to leave either way.
No matter what, it's unfortunate to see how Thomas' time as a Tiger played out, given that it looked like there was a ton of potential. LSU did continue to play close and fight hard in a lot of the games that he missed; perhaps he could have been enough of a difference-maker to get the Tigers into the tournament.