BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team eased past Angola Athletico Petroleos De Luanda, 92-52, Monday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The victory marks the second exhibition win of the 2000-’01 season for the Tigers.
LSU took advantage of poor ball-handling by Angola and a strong performance by Torris Bright who saw his first action after serving a one-game suspension handed out by LSU head coach John Brady. Bright scored a game-high 21 points and added 10 assists and four boards.
Sophomore Ronald Dupree also knocked in 21 points and added 10 rebounds for his first double-double. Dupree shot an impressive 7-11 from the floor and 6-8 from the free-throw line, a vast improvement from last week’s 1-12 performance.
“I guess what you look for is areas of improvement, and we improved this game,” said LSU head coach John Brady. “We won the field goal battle. We shot better in the second half. We got the ball in transition and we made some free throws.”
The Tigers struck early with an 11-3 run to start the game. LSU took advantage of 15 first half turnovers by Angola and held them to just 28 percent shooting from the field in the first 20 minutes of play.
Senior Lamont Roland found himself in early foul trouble picking up his second personal with 15:18 left in the first and LSU holding a 13-4 advantage. Roland, who left the game late due to a cut on his right shin, played only 13 minutes and was the only Tiger starter not to score double figures with four. He was replaced by junior Jermaine Williams who added 10 points off the Tiger bench.
Both teams went cold as neither club hit a filed goal from the 12:00 mark until 8:41 left in the first half. The Tigers suffered without a field goal for 4:38 until a fast break lay-up by Dupree sparked a 14-3 run giving LSU its largest lead of the game, 40-16.
The only bright spot in the first half for Angola was a nine point effort by Edmar Victoriano who hit a pair of free throws to cut the Tiger lead to 19. But LSU would rally back and take a 48-25 lead into the locker room.
The Tigers improved shooting from 44.7 percent to 56.5 percent in the second half. LSU also out-rebounded its opponent for the second straight game, 43-32 and collected 15 steals as a team.
Bright helped the Tigers pull away with three straight assists. The first set-up Collis Temple, III for a three-point play giving LSU a 62-36 lead. Temple scored 11 points and shot 6-7 from the charity stripe.
The third assist was an alley-oop to Brian Beshara that sparked a 7-0 LSU run giving the Tigers a 74-38 lead. Beshara added 14 points and pulled down seven rebounds.
The largest lead for the Tigers came with 2:13 left in the game when a pair of free throws by Bright gave LSU an 88-45 advantage.
The Tigers will play their first regular season game Monday night, Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. against Louisiana-Monroe at the PMAC. Tickets for the LSU home opener are $10 each and are available at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office or on the web at www.lsusports.net.