LSU replacing key players on perimeter

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 1, 2009

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Aaron Dotson missed badly on a couple of open shots Wednesday at LSU’s public basketball scrimmage.

But the freshman guard from Seattle also showed signs of his potential by showing an instinct for the team game, getting five assists, including a nice penetrate-and-dish pass to Malcolm White for a second-half dunk.

“Aaron Dotson is really knowledgeable about the game,” senior forward Tasmin Mitchell said. “He is coming along at a steady pace.”

At the same time, Dotson sometimes looked lost in the offense after just a week of practice, and at times showed the ill effects off knee surgery from last winter that still has him a little gimpy.

“Sometimes he looks like he’s 75 years old; sometimes he looks like he’s 19,” LSU coach Trent Johnson said. “But he’s playing through it. It’s part of college athletics.”

He’ll have to play through it this year, because Dotson figures to be in the mix of guards for LSU, which is trying to replace three of its top four guard and wing players from last year’s Southeastern Conference championship team.

Gone is Marcus Thornton, the SEC Player of the Year now with the New Orleans Hornets. Gone is Garrett Temple, the versatile defensive specialist who could play, and defend, any perimeter position. Also gone is the top reserve guard, Terry Martin.

The mainstay returning is junior point guard Bo Spencer who, like Dotson, is coming off an injury, a broken right shooting wrist. Also back is wing Alex Farrer, a senior, and backup point guard Chris Bass.

That would seem to create an opening for playing time for Dotson, a highly touted recruit among most publications’ top 100 high-school seniors last year. But only if he can adjust to the college game and come back from his injury.

“It’s coming along pretty well,” the 6-foot-4, 205-pounder said. “I’m adjusting to the speed of the game. Sometimes I feel like I’m going too fast instead of playing my game.”

In other words, he is learning how to play basketball in one of the country’s elite conferences.

“The SEC is nothing to play with,” Mitchell said. “This is not high school, and he is not in Seattle anymore, but I like his game.”

Dotson figures to contend for minutes at shooting guard with Farrer, who has 14 career starts, all during the Tigers’ injury-riddled 2007-08 season. Dotson and Farrer may also play some at small forward, giving LSU a three-guard look when Mitchell, who will start at small forward this season after playing power forward last year, isn’t in the game.