BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers struggled from the perimeter but got 30 points from Jaime Lloreda and Brandon Bass combined as LSU ran its record to 6-0 with a 65-50 win over Southern Mississippi Saturday afternoon at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers, in a stretch of four games against Conference USA foes, will return to action Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at the Assembly Center against Tulane. Tickets for the game, which will mark Tulane’s first appearance in Baton Rouge against LSU since 1982, are available at www.LSUsports.net.
The Tigers in the last two games have held Utah to 51 points and Southern Miss to 50 points, the first time the Tigers have held back-to-back teams to 52 points or less since the first two games of John Brady’s tenure at LSU in 1997 when LSU held Southern New Orleans (51) and Centenary (41) before that mark.
LSU made 28-of-65 field goals (43.1 percent), but just two-of-23 field goals from outside the arc (8.7 percent). However, Southern Miss was hitting just 16-of-56 shots (28.6 percent) and just 2-of-11 (18.2 percent) from three-point range.
Lloreda had another double double with 15 points and 16 rebounds despite being limited with his cut right hand that required six stitches after the Utah game on Tuesday. Bass had 15 points and two blocks on 7-of-9 shooting. Antonio Hudson was LSU’s other double-digit scorer with 10, but he left the game late in the contest with a sprained left ankle. X- rays revealed no fracture, but trainer Drew Shea listed him as doubtful for the Tulane game Tuesday.
“We approached the game Tuesday (with Utah) with the right mental approach,” said John Brady. “I could feel it, I could see it and I could tell it in the locker room. Our practices the past couple of days have been ok, but not like before we played Utah. So I knew mentally we weren’t approaching this game with the same type of maturity and detail as we did against Utah, no disrespect to Southern Miss. I think we only played in spurts, but the positive thing is we held them to 26 percent shooting, and they weren’t able to score. We played well enough offensively, and finally Jaime decided to go get some offensive rebounds against the zone, and we were able to win the game.”
Southern Miss was led by Charles Gaines, who like Lloreda came in averaging a double-double and finished the night with another double double with 14 points and 12 rebounds, while Jasper Johnson off the bench added 12.
The Tigers used a 15-4 run early in the game to go up 17-6 nine minutes in the first half and looked it would be a day when things would go easily LSU way. But the team relaxed and allowed Southern Miss (5-3) to cut the game to five and six, 30-24, at the intermission.
A three-pointer by Xavier Whipple and a two-pointer out of a media timeout by Darrel Mitchell gave LSU back a double figure game, but the Golden Eagles would give up on the strong effort, moving the game back to five at 40-35 and finally to three at 44-41 with 9:58 left. But the Tigers got two buckets by Hudson and Bass and then three straight by Lloreda to go up 56-43 with 3:47 to play and the Tigers were never threatened in the final minutes.
LSU was out rebounded, 45-38, for the first time this season, but LSU did have more assists than turnovers, 14-to-11.