BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers showed some strong offensive firepower in the first 35 minutes to build a 22-point lead before coasting to a 78-70 win over the Next Level All-Stars Monday night at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The game is the first of two exhibition contests with LSU set to host a foreign team on Friday at 7 p.m. in the Assembly Center.
The Tigers got balanced scoring with four players in double figures led by Jabari Smith with 13 points in 25 minutes. Ronald Dupree (12 rebounds) and Brian Beshara each added 12 points and Lamont Roland had 11 points.
The Next Level team of former college players was paced by Rodney Odom with 12 points with H. L. Coleman adding 11 and Clifton Cook with 10 as the visitors fell to 3-3 on the exhibition tour of college teams.
LSU built a 38-28 halftime advantage and proceeded to open it up in the second half to as much as 22 points on two occasions in the last five minutes before the game turned sloppy and the Next Level team closed it to the final margin.
“I wish the game would have ended with about five minutes to go,” said third-year LSU Coach John Brady. “That way I wouldn’t have had to watch the last four or five minutes of the game. But it was our first outing of the season. We had 21 turnovers, but I’ll bet that 10 of those happened in the last few minutes of the game. That is just how the game became at the end.”
Off-guard Roland was injured midway through the second half and carried from the court with a badly sprained ankle. He was x-rayed after the game and no fracture was reported.
LSU outrebounded the visitors, 57-39, including 25 offensive boards, but only got to the foul line 12 times.
“The things that we need to do better is to get to the foul line more,” said Brady. “We only shot 12 free throws and we put them on the line 23 times. It needs to be reversed. With the size of our team if we only get to the line 12 times than either our post men aren’t playing aggressively enough, or our guards aren’t passing the ball down low enough.”