BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers and the 18th ranked Alabama Crimson Tide met Saturday afternoon in the SEC opener for both schools. The Tide avenged a pair of losses from a year ago with an 82-73 victory over the home standing Tigers.
Not only did LSU lose its second game of the year, but senior guard Lamont Roland also injured his knee late in the first half. An MRI later in the afternoon showed he torn his left ACL and would be out for the year, leaving LSU to go through the remaining 16 games without the senior.
The loss stops a 14-game home winning streak for the Tigers that dates back to a 64-59 loss to the Tennessee Volunteers a year ago. The winning streak ties for the fifth longest win streak in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers (9-2) managed to out-rebound the Tide on both the offensive (12-to-10) and defensive (27-to-a20) sides of the ball. But 16 turnovers and 6-of-19 (.316) shooting from beyond the three-point line hurt the Tigers.
“I thought that our team played hard, and I thought that for the most part our team did what we asked them to do,” LSU head coach John Brady said. “For the most part we took good shots. We got to the foul line 32 times, and we out-rebounded them, but they were just a little better than we were for about a 10 to 12 minute stretch in the second half. I was proud of our team for how they played.”
LSU got out to a quick start scoring the first basket in just five seconds on a feed from Lamont Roland to Brian Beshara. The Tigers quickly added a three from Ronald Dupree giving LSU a 5-0 lead with just 19:08 left in the first half.
Dupree registered his seventh double double of the season adding 21 points and 13 rebounds.
The Tigers held the lead for the majority of the half, but after the 15:10 official timeout, Alabama went to work inside. Erwin Dudley, Bama’s 6’8″ forward, scored eight of the Tide’s next 10 points and gave Alabama its first lead of the game, 15-13, with 11:46. Dudley finished with 14 points and seven boards in just 28 minutes of work.
Roland answered for the Tigers with a long jumper just inside the three point line to tie the game and spark a 9-2 LSU run giving the Tigers the lead again, 22-17, midway through the first half.
Although LSU was able to get to the free-throw line 14 times in the first 20 minutes of play, the Tigers were only able to connect on six, four coming from Beshara who finished the afternoon with 13 points and nine boards and a 7-for-12 performance from the free-throw line.
Both teams matched baskets until Alabama was able to even the score again, 31-31, with 4:25. Perhaps the biggest play of the game came with 0:51 seconds left in the half when Roland came down hard on a breakaway clutching his left knee.
“There’s nothing that can express how I feel about losing Lamont (Roland) to injury in the first half,” Brady said. “How can I address the obvious? Of course I missed having him out there. It’s not official that he tore his ACL, but that was the preliminary assessment.”
Roland left the game with six points and five assists, but more importantly, LSU lost its best defender while facing the SEC’s leading scorer in Rod Grizzard. Grizzard was held to just four first half points, but finished with a game-high 23 points.
Although Alabama was able to tie the game five times during the first half, the Tide only lead for a total of three seconds. The second half was a different story.
Alabama quickly responded with a 10-0 run to start the second half giving the Tide a 46-38 lead, a lead they would not surrender.
The closest the Tigers would get would be after a dunk by Dupree that cut the Alabama lead, 49-46 at the 12:25 mark. The Tide then put together a 12-4 run that gave Bama the first double-digit lead of the game 61-50.
The Tide defense held LSU to just 3-of-12 shooting through the opening 13:19 of the second half. What kept the Tigers close was an 8-of-10 performance from the free throw line during that stretch.
With less than four minutes to play, another jumper by Gizzard extended the Alabama lead to 17, 74-57, the largest margin in the contest. Despite the loss, the Tigers continued to battle and were able to cut the Alabama lead to single digits again.
The only other Tiger to register a double-digit scoring effort was sophomore Collis Temple, III. Temple has now put together double-digit efforts in all but one game this year for LSU.
Next up for the Tigers is a Jan. 10 battle against Vanderbilt at the PMAC at 7 p.m.