The final score isn’t how Will Wade is judging games during the dawn of LSU’s season.

His team’s latest 92-51 win over Texas Southern on Friday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center is deceptive. The result looked typical, but the process wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the standard, similar to times during LSU’s season-opening 43-point win over LSU New Orleans on Tuesday.

Wade said he wants to elevate his team’s metrics to reflect a top-shelf team entering Southeastern Conference play and eventually the NCAA Tournament selection committee.

“All that stuff matters,” he said. “We barely beat our numbers tonight. I mean, our offense was pedestrian. Our defense was better than we needed it to be. Our offense, we barely got over the number. We needed to score 90 tonight, but we had too many possessions to score the (92 points), so we're going to drop on offense. So it's a net negative tonight. So that's the way I view it. Not everybody quite sees it how I see it all the time, but I felt like we needed to have a little bit better effort. We can clean up the details, but our effort certainly needs to improve.”

Texas Southern (0-2) last led 11-9 at the 14:52 mark and stayed within 15 points until the 3:34 mark of the first half.

Wade said LSU (2-0) improved its effort in the second half, holding Texas Southern to 23 points and five goals after halftime. He is of the mindset that his team must dominate now and can’t afford to be patient in developing the connectivity needed to excel in the SEC with a roster of all-new players, including six who had to wait to be fully cleared by the NCAA or the court system for a fifth season.

“We don't have time,” Wade said. “Look, it don't matter who we got. We should be able to play cleaner basketball … Look, the training wheels are off. We got to ride the bike, all right. This is a performance-based industry, so we're judged on how we play. Look, we're all very well compensated, me included, players. We're all very well compensated to perform at a certain level and to perform to a certain standard, and we didn't do that. It's on me. I didn't have the team as ready on this short break.”

The player who struggled the most for LSU was Brice Dessert. While the 7-foot, 255-pound center from France had nine points on 4-of-6 shooting, he had two rebounds and played just 12 minutes, including five in the second half. Dessert finished with three fouls, two turnovers and no blocks as the team was outscored by six points during his minutes. In the opener, he had four turnovers and fouled out in 18 minutes.

Wade explained that the decline in playing time wasn’t all due to performance. One of Texas Southern’s centers was unavailable, which led to an up-tempo style that would give Dessert a speed disadvantage. Wade also shared why he’s not concerned about his 23-year-old’s lackluster showing.

“He's still adjusting,” he said. “Brice is a really good player, and he hasn't played as well as he's capable of playing. The game's a lot faster for him right now, and we just got to get him to pause for poise for a little bit.

“We got incredible faith in him, incredible confidence in him. He's a great person, works really hard as well. Look, he's disappointed too, but it's an adjustment. And he'll adjust. He’ll be good.”