BATON ROUGE — For the second straight exhibition contest, the LSU men’s basketball team struggled offensively and defensively in the first half. But unlike last week’s game, the Tigers’ second half turnaround was more than enough, coming back from a nine point halftime deficit to defeat the Southeastern All-Stars 77-64 on Monday night at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers, 1-1 in the exhibition season, open the regular season on Friday night at 7 p.m. against Southern University in the first of four LSU home games in nine days. Tickets are on sale at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office for $10 each and tickets are also available online at www.LSUsports.net.
LSU was down 37-28 at the half, but a three pointer by Darrel Mitchell, a Brandon Bass bucket and a three-point play by Darnell Lazare cut the margin to 37-36 two minutes into the second half. LSU took the lead for the first time, 40-39, on a dunk by Mitchell and took the lead for good on a dunk by Lazare, 42-41, with 15:10 to play.
Bass led LSU with 21 points and 12 rebounds in 32 minutes, hitting 8-of-13 field goals with Mitchell adding 16 points and Lazare 15. Xavier Whipple had seven assists to lead LSU in that category. Wallace Prather had 14 points to lead the Southeastern All-Stars (0-6), while Octavious Thomas had 13.
LSU shot 45.6 percent for the game, 54.1 percent (20-of-37) in the second half. The All-Stars shot just 7-of-37 in the second half (18.9 percent), after hitting 15-of-35 in the first half. LSU out rebounded the Stars, 50-41.
“I think the second half our team played good enough,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “We outscored them 49-27, and turned a poor first half into a better second half and I liked what we did there. At least the first 10 minutes of the second half we got the game right because we tried to guard. I started the three veterans in the perimeter and we wanted to get out and cover and we were able to do that. We did the necessary things to get the score right but we need to get better in a hurry. Our team is not right yet because it is not whole yet. I have got to do what I need to do and what I think is the right thing to do and that how we are going to approach it.”
The Tigers offense and defense were out of sync in the first 20 minutes, down quickly 7-0 and 37-24 before the Tigers scored the last four points of the half to get the Tigers started back on the right track.
“We just made careless plays, just mind-boggling plays to me. We do not finish balls, but we started finishing a little bit better in the second half, but we don’t finish balls,” Brady said. “To turn that around from how poorly we played in the first half was a positive thing, but we need to be able to do that for longer periods of time and not just in spurts.”