BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tiger basketball team rattled off its second straight win of the 2000-2001 season, 90-62, over the Norfolk St. Spartans Saturday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU (2-0) took advantage of 22 Norfolk St. turnovers and was lead by senior Brian Beshara’s 25 points. Sophomore Ronald Dupree also added his second straight double-double with 15 points and 13 boards.
“Norfolk State was a lot tougher than we expected: pretty athletic, big guys who liked to bang,” Dupree said. “We came out and tried to attack them as much as we could and made mistakes along the way, but we kept on attacking and things worked out for us.”
Both teams got off to a slow start offensively. The Tigers opened the game shooting just 2-9 from the floor as a team, but LSU was the first to get on the board at the 18:43 mark with a lay-up from Beshara. The senior provided the early scoring with the Tiger’s first 10 points and finished the first half with 20 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the field.
Norfolk’s Terrance Winston buried a three pointer with 13:34 left in the first half to give the Spartans a 12-10 lead. Winston led the Spartans with 16 points including three of Norfolk’s four three-pointers, but it was the last lead they would enjoy.
For the next 9:16, LSU would outscore the Spartans by 21 points, including a 12-0 run during which Norfolk St. went 3:50 without a basket. The run was capped off by a pair of free throws by Collis Temple, III giving the Tigers their largest lead of the half, 42-22.
The Spartans (0-2) refused to go away, however, putting together an 8-3 run of their own to close out the first 20 minutes and cut the LSU lead 45-31.
“Our team was okay in the first half, but I thought we played better in the second half,” said LSU head coach John Brady. “Offensively, we were in a rush in the first half, we wanted to make it happen quick. In the second half, when we didn’t have a transition, we ran a little better offense and got the ball where we needed it.”
Despite being out-rebounded 26-22 in the first half, the Tigers came back to win the battle of the boards 43-41. LSU was led in the second half by Temple’s 10 points. The sophomore finished the evening with 19 points, including an impressive 9-of-9 shooting from the free-throw line. As a team the Tigers shot 23 for 32 from the charity-stripe.
LSU opened the second half strong putting together a 6-0 run in the first three minutes to give the Tigers a 51-31 lead. The Spartans continued to battle and were even able to cut the LSU lead to 14 after a Cornelius Roberts lay-up with 15:43 remaining. Roberts finished the night with 11 point on 5-7 shooting.
The Tigers continued to slowly pull away until LSU put together a late 14-4 run to end the game in the final 4:23, during which coach Brady emptied his bench. All 13 of the active Tigers saw action in tonight’s contest.
Next up for LSU is a non-conference match-up against the University of Houston on Tuesday Nov. 28. LSU will travel to Texas in the first road game of the season. The next home game for the Tigers will be in two weeks when LSU plays host to Texas Southern on Dec. 9.