by Chris Macaluso
LSUsports.net
BATON ROUGE — Predicting the score of an LSU-Arkansas basketball game usually takes about as much guesswork as predicting the South Louisiana weather.
Still, a prediction that neither team would score 40 points by the 8:30 mark of the second half would have drawn some funny stares before Saturday’s game.
But that was the case as the Tigers and Razorbacks pushed, grabbed and shoved their way to a 59-52 Arkansas win in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Not even the presence of All-American Rudy Macklin and the rest of the outstanding 1981 LSU Final Four team, who were honored throughout the game, could keep Arkansas from improving its record to 11-6 overall, 3-3 in the Southeastern Conference. A still decimated LSU team fell to 11-6, 1-5 in conference play.
“We really didn’t play very well,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “I am not taking anything away from Arkansas, I have never said that, but I didn’t think they were very good either to be quite honest.”
The game followed nearly the same script as LSU’s four other conference losses as the Tigers fell behind early, made up the deficit with tough defense and a scoring run, but ran out of steam in the closing minute.
LSU fell behind early in the first half as the Razorbacks scored the first six points of the game. But the Tigers fought their way back to take as much as a four-point lead when Jermaine Williams hit the front end of a one and one with 12:56 to play in the first. Williams was one of three Tigers to score in double-figures. He finished with 11 points while Ronald Dupree and Collis Temple III scored 14 and 16 respectively.
Arkansas was led by junior guard Teddy Gipson who scored a career and game high 20 points, hitting on 8-13 shots from the floor.
Gipson helped stake the Razorbacks to a 13-point lead, 28-15 with 5:31 left in the first half. But the Tigers fought back again, shrinking that lead to just two, 28-26 on a pair of Temple free-throws with less than a minute left before half.
Both teams shot less than 45 percent from the floor in the first and both committed nine turnovers in the first, a characteristic which carried over into the second half of play.
“We weren’t very good offensively,” Brady said. “We played with effort and we tried hard but we didn’t get much accomplished in a positive way.”
Just as in the first, LSU fell behind early in the second half as the Razorbacks went on a 11-3 run to open up a 39-31 lead with 13:00 to play. But, just like the first half, the Tigers made up that lead as well when Temple gave LSU a 40-39 lead on a lay-up with 8:12 to play.
LSU extended that lead to 44-41 on a Brian Beshara jumper at the 6:39 mark, but that lead disappeared for good when Gipson nailed a long three-pointer to put the Razorbacks up 46-44 with 5:40 left in the contest.
Arkansas led by as much as 10 in the waning moments. A dunk by Dupree in the final second cut the final score to seven.
LSU returns to action at home Wednesday night when they play host to South Carolina at 7 p.m.