BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team ran its record to start the season to 3-0 for the first time since 2000 with a 78-69 win over Troy State (1-1) at the Maravich Assembly Center Wednesday night.
The Tigers stymied the high-flying Trojans who opened the season by scoring 140 points against an NAIA opponent on Monday. After making 26-of-52 threes in that contest, Troy State made 12-of-29, but the Tigers more than held their own on the offensive end, hitting 10-of-19 (52.6 percent) and overall LSU’s field goal percentage was 26-of-53 (49.1 percent), more importantly 60 percent (15-25) in the second half after Troy State took a 32-31 halftime advantage.
Jaime Lloreda led LSU with a strong performance for the second straight game with 23 points on 8-of-10 field goal shooting and 7-of-10 free throw tossing. Antonio Hudson had 15 points, while Darrel Mitchell scored 13 points and Xavier Whipple 11. Greg Davis led Troy State with 21 points and seven assists, while Herbert Evans had 15 and Kendrick Johnson 12.
“I thought the second half that there were stretches where we played pretty good. I have to be honest with you,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “I thought Tack Minor made some improvement and I though Brandon Bass learned to play when he did not shoot the ball enough or get to touch it a lot; he had to get it off the glass. (Troy State) played that zone and trapped everything. We shoot 50 percent form the floor, are 10-19 from the three and we go to the free throw line 23 times, we out-rebound that team (35-28) and we only have 13 turnovers for the game. I do not know much more than we can expect out of our team right now.”
Troy State tried to run the ball up and down the court, but quickly settled into a more controlled situation as the Trojans, champions of the Atlantic Sun a year ago with 26 wins, was able to make some plays in the first half and stayed with LSU through five ties and a cold spell over the final four minutes that allowed Troy State to score the last five of the half to go up, 32-31.
The Trojans got the first basketball of the half to go up 34-31 before Whipple hit a three-pointer with 18:31 to play to tie it at 34-34. Troy State would had a free throw to go up 35-34, but when Antonio Hudson hit a trey with 17:36 to play to put LSU up 37-35, the Tigers had the lead for good.
The Tigers would build a couple of double figure leads only to see Troy State try to get back in it, but the closest the Trojans would get after falling behind by 10 or more was seven, 58-51, with 6:51 to play.
“Every time it seemed we had a 13, 14, 15-point lead they would make a couple of shots on us,” Brady said. “There is not a lot I can say about that except there were some pretty good shots. I thought we got better defensively as the game went along. For the most part I thought we made progress.”
The Tigers will play their final game before an 18-day break that includes school dead week and semester exams on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Assembly Center against Louisiana-Monroe. Tickets will be available beginning 90 minutes prior to game time at the upper ticket windows of the building.