BATON ROUGE – It was a scenario no one wanted to think about Sunday at the Maravich Assembly Center.
Nicholls State, 1-8 on the season, had hit a late three to go to the dressing room ahead of LSU, 25-22. LSU team leader and one of its top scorers, Collis Temple III, wasn’t dressed because of tendinitis in his already sprained ankle. Backup point guard Charlie Thompson was out still bothered by his sore neck. Leading scorer Ronald Dupree was 0-of-6 from the field and 0-of-2 at the free throw line. It looked like it was developing into a long afternoon for the Tigers in their final pre-conference tuneup.
Final score: LSU 71, Nicholls State 35. Go figure.
LSU turned up the engine in the second half, outscoring the Colonels, 49-10, including a 14 minute streak when the Colonels failed to put any points on the board.
In the process, Torris Bright hit 8-of-10 field goals, including four treys to finish with a career high 22 points with six assists in 36 minutes.
Antonio Hudson, starting for Temple, finished with 14 points while Jermaine Williams added 10. Dupree didn’t crack double figures for the second straight game, but did have a career-best tying 16 rebounds. Brad Bridgewater also had double figure boards with 10.
Ronnie Price was the only player in double figures for the Colonels, now 1-9, with 10.
The Tigers appeared on their heels in the first 20 minutes, much as they did without Temple in the UNO game some 12 days ago. Nicholls State jumped out to a 9-1 lead before the Tigers came back to go up 15-11. But the Colonels were much the aggressor in the half and Damien Lennon hit a three-pointer with four seconds left to go to the dressing room, 25-22, over the Tigers.
“Honestly in the first half we tried. They shot 38 percent in the first half and we were worse. I don’t think that our problem is defensively as much as it is on the offensive end of the court. We missed some good shots. We were rushing our shots at times and I didn’t think that we weren’t trying in the first half,” said LSU Coach John Brady.
“Here’s the one thing that people never print. Give credit to Ricky Broussard and Nicholls State. Don’t talk about how bad or poor LSU did, but talk about how our team tried the first half. We might have rushed some shots, but they (Nicholls State) did a nice job. Give Nicholls some credit.”
“We played a great first half,” said Nicholls State Coach Rickey Broussard. “I can’t ask for anything better than the way we played in the first half. We played pretty flawless basketball. We had control of the game, blocked out, got every loose ball and I thought we outplayed them in the first half.”
In the second half, LSU was able to take the lead for good at 28-27 at the 18:58 mark on a fast break dunk by Bridgewater and when Reggie Williams made a layup at the 16:18 mark to make it 33-31 for LSU, no one knew he would be scoring the last Colonel points for 14 minutes.
LSU would go on a 31-0 run over the next 14 minutes before Price would score at the 2:23 mark. In the half, LSU would outscore the Colonels, 49-10, and hold the Colonels to the lowest total points since Dec. 1999, when Southeastern Louisiana scored 36.
“You have to give the Tigers some credit also. We did a good job of continuing to guard like we did,” said Brady. “We created some baskets off of turnovers and got into transition in the second half. Torris Bright was about perfect out there. When he’s right, like any point guard for any team, things flow well, and we had a nice flow in the second half offensively.”
“They didn’t get any dunks or lay ups in the first half and then in the second half it was all dunks and layups. (Nicholls State) was the aggressor in the first half,” said Broussard, “and we had LSU on their heels. In the second half it was just the opposite. We got complacent and when LSU made a run we hung our heads.”
The Tigers, now 10-3, open Southeastern Conference play on Saturday, Jan. 5, at 6 p.m. at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa against the University of Alabama. The game will be regionally televised by the Fox Sports’ SEC-TV package.