Written by Matt Norlander at CBSSports.com
There he was again: Ben Simmons looking like he had no business wasting his time playing college basketball, calmly cruising to another really impressive personal performance, accumulating numbers that will amount to a historic individual season. Tuesday night’s results: 23 points, 12 rebounds, six assists and a late foul-out — his 19th double-double of the season.
All of it amounted to nothing. His team, LSU, lost 85-65 to an Arkansas squad that was below .500 when it woke up Tuesday. The Hogs dropped the Tigers to 16-12 and booted them, perhaps permanently, from this season’s NCAA Tournament bubble. Another bad loss to another bad team — LSU has now lost three straight and four of its last five — so why are the Bayou Bengals even worth discussing anymore? Simmons and only Simmons, of course.
Never before in college basketball has so good a player on so bad a team held our attention for this long and for so many reasons. No. 25 has — through faults not all his own — already built one of the most contradictory reputations I can recall in this sport.
Years from now, we’ll remember (or, perhaps, won’t let anyone forget) Simmons’ college career for two reasons. One of those reasons will be the fulfillment of his Freshman-of-the-Year performance, the gaudy numbers he put up while showing us the latest iteration of The Next Big Thing in Basketball. It’s probably going to be a long time before we see another player, as a freshman, so casually stuff the stat sheet the way Simmons has this season.
But this solitary streak of dominance will not define Simmons at LSU. His incredible statistical output is going to be overshadowed by his underachiving team. The 2015-16 LSU Tigers seem incapable of getting out of their own way. They have failed to purely learn how to play together despite bringing so much talent to the court.
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