BATON ROUGE — On Dale Brown Day at the Maravich Center, the LSU Men’s Basketball team played their hearts out but came up just short of the upset and fell to No. 9 Kentucky, 70-64 Sunday afternoon in Baton Rouge.
LSU (17-8, 7-7 SEC) has now lost four-straight games since their 73-70 upset of then-No. 24 Florida in Gainesville. The Tigers are now in a tie for second place in the SEC West with Alabama, although the Tigers hold the tiebreaker by virtue of their two wins during the season.
With the victory, Kentucky (21-4, 11-3 SEC) has now won four-straight games and wrapped-up their fifth-straight SEC East title. The Wildcats head to South Carolina up by three games with only two remaining.
LSU was led in scoring by guard Darrel Mitchell with 15 points. Mitchell continued his torrid pace from behind the arc, hitting on 4-of-8 three-pointers. As a team, LSU was 9-24 for 37.5 percent from 3-point land.
The Tigers also got a big game from freshman forward Brandon Bass. Bass, who has struggled in the last few games with injured forward Jaime Lloreda on the bench, put in 13 points and grabbed six rebounds in 37 minutes.
The Wildcats were led in scoring by senior guard Gerald Fitch with 23 points. Fitch seemed to hit all the big shots, including 5-8 from the three-point line. Forward Erik Daniels added 14 points and guard Cliff Hawkins put up 13.
“Well, I was proud of our team, said LSU Coach John Brady, but first thing make no mistake, we did not win the game. We won some other things, which our team needed along the way. We did not win the win the game, which was the most important thing, but our team won a few other things. I was extremely proud of the effort that we gave, and certainly we had a couple of miscues and we could have executed a little bit better, but I could not ask more of our team with what they have faced and what has happened to them. I thought we competed extremely well and executed pretty well.”
The Tigers had the lead only twice in the game, both by just a point and both in the first half, 19-18 at 9:37 and 29-28 at 3:16 in the first half.
The Tigers trailed by four, 33-29, at halftime.
LSU fell behind early in the second half, allowing Kentucky to go up by 11, 52-41, with under 10 minutes remaining in the game. The Tigers fought back though, and closed the margin to just three at the 3:16 mark.
Kentucky would not be contained, running their lead up to six inside of a minute, until the Wildcats fouled Mitchell on a made 3-point basket. Mitchell hit the foul shot and the Tigers were down just two at 64-62.
Kentucky hit all six of its free throws after that, and put the game away.
The Tigers made a school record 17-of-17 free throws in the game as six players went to the line and made free throws for LSU.
“We now have a two game season with an extra game in the SEC Tournament,” said Brady. “We have Ole Miss at home and Auburn on the road, and if we win both of those we will be in the NCAA Tournament at 9-7. If we win one, we still may get in. That is what we are playing for and for us to have gone through what we have gone through recently to still have an opportunity to do that just has to make you proud of our players and how they responded (today).”
LSU returns to action in their home-finale on Wednesday, March 3, against Ole Miss. This game is Senior Day for the Tigers and will tip-off at 7:00 p.m. in the Maravich Center. Tickets are available at the LSU Ticket Office, 225-578-2184, or online at www.LSUsports.net.