Tiger ‘D’ Holds Back Utah, 65-51

BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team ran its record to 5-0 on the season with a convincing 65-51 win over the University of Utah Tuesday night in a nationally-televised contest at the Maravich Assembly Center.

The Tigers turned the ball over just nine times on the night and forced 14 turnovers, getting 16 points off those turnovers, many of them in the first half when LSU opened up a 30-19 halftime advantage.

Jaime Lloreda hit 8-of-13 field goal attempts and led LSU with 16 points and was one of three LSU starters with eight rebounds. Lloreda missed a good portion of the latter stages of the game after cutting his hand on the rim going for a block and the area between his fingers on his right hand needed six stitches after the game to close the cut. He is listed as probable for Saturday’s game with Southern Miss.

Brandon Bass added 15 points and eight boards for LSU and Darrel Mitchell hit for 13 points off the bench. Regis Koundjia was the other Tiger with eight boards.

Utah center Andrew Bogut had 11 points and 11 boards to lead the 6-3 Utes, while Tim Frost and Justin Hawkins had 10 points each.

“I must say that after a 17-day layoff … I thought our team from an effort standpoint defensively was pretty good,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “I appreciate the effort and I told them after the game. We guarded them like we were supposed to, we had a couple of break downs there at times, but for the most part I thought the pressure and the pride on the ball and the ability to get out and take one pass away and force them out farther from the basket than they wanted to be, was the key to us winning the game. Offensively, we were pretty good at times and sometimes we did not execute as well, but that is growing pains with some of our young players.”

LSU never fell behind in the contest after the game was tied at 2-2, jumping out to a 15-8 lead which caused Utah to use a timeout with 12:01 to go in the  first half. The Tigers kept applying the defensive pressure while hitting on the offensive end and built the lead to double figures for the first time at 26-15 with 4:15 to go in the half on a Lloreda lay up. The lead reached 15, before the Utes scored the final four of the half to make it 30-19.

In the first half, LSU had just five turnovers, while Utah had nine, hitting just 27.3 percent from the field.

“They are a good team,” Utah head coach Rick Majerus said. “They are very physical. They intimidated us. They got 17 offensive boards, and I counted 11 for baskets. That is 22 points when you don’t block out. They just took it to us and pounded us right there.”

On Lloreda, Majerus said: “He is a tough customer. He was an all-league player here last year, and he will be an all-league player this year. He is just tough, physical and aggressive. He was more tough, more physical than any of our players, therefore it was a productive night for him.”

The Tigers stretched the lead to 17 five occasions in the second half before Utah made a run, cutting it to nine, 50-41, with 6:56 to play. But the Tigers worked it back to 16 before settling for the final margin.

“I thought every player on our team had his moments of good play, and that is what I like to see. Certainly this will give us some momentum for the game that we have coming up against Southern Miss on Saturday at 3 p.m., then versus Tulane here Tuesday (Dec. 23) and then UAB in New Orleans (Dec. 27). This was a good game for us to prepare to play the next three opponents that we have coming up,” said Brady.