Skylar Mays deserved to walk off the court for the final time in an LSU uniform with a standing ovation.

The LSU senior guard should have gotten the chance to salute the crowd who watched him turn into one of the program’s most influential players of the 21st century. The Baton Rouge native earned the chance to walk to the bench, dap up all his teammates and Will Wade, then say goodbye for the final time. Whether that was after an opening round loss or a national championship victory, Mays should’ve gotten that chance.

Instead, the cancelation of the NCAA Tournament meant that all Mays got as a final sendoff was an Instagram post. It didn’t sit right with me that Mays’ LSU farewell was probably sandwiched between that 5,694th picture of your high school friend’s cat and the burger that your foodie co-worker insisted on sharing.

So this, my friends, is a salute to Mays.

What made him special, you ask? It’s true that plenty of seniors like Mays saw their careers end abruptly. One of the toughest sports-related things to stomach in all of this is all the seniors who got the sudden news that their college careers were over. And even though he got to celebrate a dominant Senior Night win against Georgia, it’s strange to think Mays’ final LSU moments were a regular season blowout against a bottom-feeder SEC team.

If he’s not the poster child for who a struggling program should build its foundation on, I don’t know who is.

Last week, the SEC handed out its postseason awards. Not surprisingly, Mays was a 1st-team All-SEC selection.

Even more impressive? He earned the SEC’s Scholar Athlete of the Year Award for the 2nd consecutive year. On top of that, the senior guard was also named the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-American of the Year. Mays, who has a 3.93 GPA as a kinesiology major with a concentration on human movement/pre-med, was the only Power 5 player who repeated that feat.

That was the 3rd consecutive year that Mays received national recognition for his academics. As a sophomore and a junior, Mays earned the Jesse Owens Award for the highest GPA for an undergraduate student-athlete as named by the LSU Black Faculty and Staff Caucus. The kid wants to be a doctor. Seeing how surgical he is on the hardwood, it’s not such a difficult thing to imagine.

Much of this isn’t news to LSU fans. I mean, they watched the guy start for the past 4 years. Shoot, the diehards even knew about him back when he starred at University Laboratory on LSU’s campus from grades 8-11 until spending a year at the highly-regarded Findlay Prep (Nev.). As a borderline 4-star recruit, Mays elected to come back to Baton Rouge for college despite the fact that LSU hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game in 7 years.

Mays’ loyalty to LSU has never been in question during his 4-year career as a starter. It wasn’t in question when the coaching staff who recruited him was fired following his freshman season, which ended with a 2-16 mark in SEC play. Nobody questioned Mays’ loyalty when he led the Tigers to a Sweet 16 berth amidst all the doubt about Will Wade’s future, which was in limbo after he was suspended for a potential NCAA violation in the home stretch of the 2018-19 regular season.

In an era when social media reminds us all too much that we’re talking about 18-22 year-old kids, Mays conducted himself like a grown adult. He came back to LSU for his senior year after going through the pre-draft process and getting a full NBA evaluation.

Nothing, however, was more admirable than the way that Mays handled the death of his best friend and LSU teammate Wayde Sims, who was shot and killed before the start of the 2018-19 season. Mays spoke of his childhood friend at his vigil on campus, and he was a pallbearer at his funeral. That year was dedicated to Sims. Mays admitted that it might not ever feel normal for him to play at LSU.

After that tragedy, Mays vowed to live his life in honor of his late friend. It’s safe to say he did that — Mays gave a special honor to Sims with his custom senior night sneakers — both on and off the court.

Mays checked every box that the NCAA would brag about on one of those “student-athlete commercials.” Elite academically? Absolutely. Four-year guy? Yep. Cliché “always improving” player? For sure. Of all the most important things that Wade inherited to build up an SEC basement team, Mays had to be at the top of that list.

It’s Mays who served as the team’s steadying force in an eventful 2 years in Baton Rouge. That 2-year stretch is was LSU’s best since 2006, and if the Tigers had won an NCAA Tournament game — something that seemed very realistic in what would’ve been an 8-9 matchup — it would’ve marked the first time that happened in consecutive seasons since 1987.

Still, Mays made SEC history of his own:

According to Worsham, Mays is also the only LSU player to end his career with 1,500 points, 400 rebounds, 300 assists and 200 steals. He’s far more than just an elite scorer.

But it’s somewhat fitting that Mays’ top 3 scoring performances at LSU all came in losses. One of those came last week when he dropped 28 points against Arkansas. After LSU trailed by 21 at halftime of that game, Mays’ 21 points in the 2nd half got the Tigers within 7 points in the final minute. It wasn’t enough, but it served as a reminder for just how quick he can get it rolling.

This year, Mays averaged a career-high 11 field-goal attempts per game, which didn’t even crack the NCAA’s top 250 in terms of total field goal attempts this season. He was never a high volume player in terms of field goal attempts, but he was comfortable stepping into that role if that’s what’s needed on a given night, especially in winning time.

Back in January, LSU trailed Mississippi State by 1 with 4.6 seconds to play and the length of the court to go. As Mays took the inbounds pass, Beth Mowins said on the ESPN broadcast, “Mays has it, does not have a basket in the second half …” Calmly, Mays stepped into his 11th shot of the night, this time with his foot on the 3-point line — and he buried it.

Mays said afterwards that it was a lucky shot. Maybe it was. Perhaps he would’ve had a few lucky shots go down in the NCAA Tournament had it been allowed to happen. Either way, nothing in his career could be chalked up to luck.

He’s a walking example of a kid who did it right.

Worsham made a fantastic suggestion about LSU basketball taking a page out of the football program’s playbook with how it honors certain numbers. What No. 7 and No. 18 represent to LSU football should become what the basketball program does with Mays’ No. 4. I don’t hate that one bit.

That’d be a better way to make sure that he’s not lost in the shuffle during this bizarre time. What a fitting tribute that would be to Mays if every player who earns that No. 4 jersey at LSU embodied the characteristics that defined his career.

That’s a better salute than I could give.