After a 2-of-7 start to the game, a 9-of-25 start to the season, and two days of challenging from his head coach, Skylar Mays had finally had enough.
With LSU and Memphis tied at 29 with just under seven minutes to play in Tuesday night’s matchup, Mays transferred all the frustration of those missed shots and verbal barbs into his left leg, which he planted between the the SEC logo and the restricted arc on the Pete Maravich Assembly Court.
His right leg went into the chest of a Memphis defender, and the rest of his body followed skyward.
When Mays landed, he’d flushed home the dunk of his career and set LSU on its way to a 7-0 run and, eventually, an 85-76 win.
“I think he jumped over him,” said freshman Ja’vonte Smart, who scored 13 points as one of five Tigers in double figures. “I haven’t seen him do that since high school.”
The dunk brought back good memories for Smart, but, unfortunately, bad memories for Emmitt Williams.
Emmitt Williams on Skylar Mays‘ dunk: “Ohhhh, Lord. That caught me off guard. You guys gotta really see me on the bench. I’m the number one cheerleader. Forget the girls on the sideline. Look at me. I’m the cheerleader. I’m so happy to see my guys to great.”
Too funny.
— Cody Worsham (@CodyWorsham) November 14, 2018
“You guys wanna know a secret?” Williams, who scored 11 points and grabbed 10 rebounds while throwing down two contested dunks of his own. “The first day of practice, Skylar dunked on me, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap. What am I supposed to do now?’ That was my first time getting dunked on in college – by my teammate. That was my sign right there. Welcome to college.”
On Tuesday, Mays’ dunk was a sign of better things to come, for the Tigers and himself. The junior guard didn’t miss a shot the rest of the night, following up his dunk with a layup on the very next possession that brought the PMAC crowd to its feet. When Memphis pulled within a point three minutes later, Mays scored the final eight points of the first half to send LSU (3-0) into the locker room up 48-39.
“I’ve been shooting the ball pretty badly to start the year off,” Mays said. “It was good to see one go in and get my confidence going from there.”
“I thought that was a great finish to the first half,” said head coach Will Wade. “I thought Skylar really picked it up for us.”
Mays wasn’t the only veteran who upped his game Tuesday. Senior Kavell Bigby-Williams, an Oregon transfer who sat last season out due to NCAA transfer rules, scored 14 points on 7-of-7 shooting off the bench for LSU. It was part of a rim-focused attack for the Tigers, who outscored the visiting Tigers 48-30 inside the paint.
“We really, the last couple days, challenged (Skylar) and Kavell,” Wade said. “I was really proud of those guys for the way they responded. What we saw from Kavell tonight is what he does. He’s a really good player for us. I was really proud of Sky and Kavell.”
Bigby-Williams entered the game averaging just 4.5 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, but he surpassed both of those totals in the first 20 minutes. With Naz Reid (11 points, 5 rebounds in 20 minutes) sidelined by foul trouble, Bigby-Williams focused on crashing the glass, pulling down three of LSU’s 13 offensive rebounds on the night.
“He runs the floor, he dunks the ball, he had the nice post move there when it got to a two-point game,” Wade said of Bigby-Williams. “He blocks shots, he affects a lot of shots, He’s active, he’s sprinting the floor. He was really, really good today. I was proud of him.”
His 14 points were a career high, but the play Bigby-Williams enjoyed best was the one everyone else enjoyed best, too.
He just happened to have the best view when Mays went up and the dunk came down.
“That got us going a lot,” Bigby-Williams said. “I didn’t think he was going to dunk that. I was waiting for him to dump it off to me. That really got us going and obviously got the fans and the crowd going.”
It wasn’t the first poster of Mays’ college career. He asserts it could be the last.
“I told the guys, ‘That’s about it for the year. That’s all I got in me,’” he laughed after the game. “I’m getting old.”
Williams, meanwhile, was just happy to see someone else on the receiving end of a Skylar slam.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t me tonight,” Williams laughed.