BATON ROUGE — LSU won its seventh straight game Tuesday night at the Maravich Assembly Center, 73-45, over the University of Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks.
The wins for the Tigers, 7-0 on the season, marks the first time the Tigers have started with seven straight victories since the 1985-86 team opened with 14 straight triumphs. The Tigers will be back at home Saturday for a special 2 p.m. matinee contest against Sam Houston State. Several former players will be on hand for a special players reunion weekend including All-Americans Bob Pettit and Bobby Lowther.
The Tigers got strong performances from junior Brian Beshara who had a career-high 27 points and 21 points and nine boards from sophomore Stromile Swift. Beshara hit 10-of-15 field goal attempts, including four treys, while Swift was 10-of-13 from the free throw line.
LSU and UT-Martin (2-5) played event for the first five minutes before LSU went on a 16-2 run to open up a 24-8 advantage with 9:26 to go in the first half. The Tigers led 39-20 at the intermission and had the lead up to as much as 32, 56-24, in the second half.
All 13 Tigers played and 10 players scored, with the biggest surprise being that Jabari Smith was unable to tally in 19 minutes of playing time.
Andrae Betts led UTM with 16 points.
“I thought Brian Beshara and Stromile Swift were excellent,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “Except for a 12-minute stretch in the second half when we started substituting, I thought we had played well. I like our team right now just the way it is. Sure, we need to work on some things, but I like our team the way it is.”
“I think we were still kind of sluggish in the first half,” said Swift. “But we kind of pulled together and came back out more defensive minded in the second half and we opened up the lead. We just tried to get things started quickly, and just get everybody in the flow of the game.”