BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team got 29 points from its reserves and shot 58.3 percent from the field in the second half to breeze past Prairie View A&M, 75-49, on Tuesday night in the Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers (6-1) overcame a cool shooting first half and used an assortment of players off its bench for the most part of the second half to cruise to victory before taking on No. 1 Arizona on Saturday.
Prairie View A&M fell to 1-3 on the season with close losses at Oklahoma (75-63) and against Texas A&M (83-78), and a victory at Houston (78-75). The Panthers next play Arkansas-Little Rock on the road on Thursday night.
Torris Bright led four Tigers in double figures with 14 points including three three-pointers. Darrel Mitchell also had three treys and scored 12 points, while Jaime Lloreda had a double double with 12 points and 12 rebounds. Ronald Dupree also registered a double double with 11 points and 11 rebounds, as the Tigers outrebounded the Panthers, 47-27.
Guards Kevin Cooper and Gregory Burks had 16 and 15 points, respectively, on a combined 11 of 30 shooting. The Panthers were held to 16-of-52 shooting for 30.8 percent including 3-of-19 from three-point range.
With Panthers’ 6-11 center Roderick Riley on the bench with two fouls in the first 2:17 of the game, the Tigers mounted a 12-1 rebounding advantage by led by only four, 9-5, due to a 3-of-13 (23.1 percent) start from the field.
As LSU began to find its touch from the perimeter, a three-pointer by Bright off an inbounds pass gave the Tigers a 14-5 lead and capped a 7-0 run.
With the Tigers leading 18-8 at the 7:25 mark, there had been more fouls called (11) than field goals made (10). Disagreeing with a call, LSU head coach John Brady was given a technical foul that led to four-straight Panthers free throws.
Leading by six, the Tigers turned up the intensity on both ends of the court and brought the crowd into the game. A 12-4 run pushed the lead to 30-16 with less than three minutes to play.
Prairie View went on a 7-2 run before Darrel Mitchell hit a trey from the left corner in the closing seconds of the half to lead 35-23 with 20 minutes to play.
The teams matched baskets in the first six minutes of the second half, allowing the Tigers to continue to lead by 12, 45-33, when Brady went to his bench to give four starters a breather.
With reserves Mitchell, Charlie Thompson, Brad Bridgewater and Thomas Davis in the game, LSU went on a 11-0 run that was finished by a pair of three-pointers by Mitchell from the left baseline. The Tigers led 56-33 with 9:42 to play.
Starters Dupree and Lloreda returned to the game at the eight-minute mark with a 20-point lead, 59-39. With less than two minutes to play and leading 73-47, Brady emptied his bench and brought in Courtney Trask, Xavier Whipple, Tim Bush, Brian Green and Josh Maravich.
Maravich, the son of the NCAA all-time scoring leader “Pistol” Pete Maravich, scored the first basket of his college career — a fast break layup assisted by Bush — with 8.1 seconds remaining in the game. Josh will need 3,665 more points to elipse the “Pistol’s” career total at LSU from 1967-70.
The Tigers return to action on Saturday night when they play host to No. 1-ranked Arizona at 7 p.m. in the Maravich Assembly Center. The game will be nationally televised by ESPN2.