BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers roared early and often Friday night in the first round of the LSU Louisiana Classic to score a convincing 83-58 win over Tulane in the season opening basketball game at the Maravich Center.
The Tigers will face, Louisiana Lafayette, an 84-63 winner over Louisiana Tech, in the championship game of the tournament Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. Tulane and Louisiana Tech will meet at 12:30 p.m. in the consolation championship.
Both games of Sunday’s doubleheader will be televised regionally by Cox Sports Television (Ch. 37 in Baton Rouge). The LSU game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the internet at www.LSUsports.net. The game will also be broadcast on the usual affiliates of the other three schools.
Tickets for the session are $17 for middle level and $15 for upper level tickets with upper level tickets also available for $5 with a ticket stub from the Saturday LSU-Ole Miss football game.
The Tigers scored the first bucket of the contest and never trailed, jumping out to a 9-1 advantage before Tulane was forced to call its first timeout. The Wave would cut the lead to four, 11-7, before the Tigers got rolling again going to the dressing room at the half with a 34-21 advantage.
“I thought this was a good night for our team,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “I didn’t envision in any way that we were going to be able to separate the score as we did. I thought we got a great mix offensively. I thought what we’ve been emphasizing we were able to do in terms of getting some easy baskets in transition, running the floor and pitching the ball ahead and throwing it to the post. Even when we didn’t have it, I thought for the most part we were able to run some offense and get some nice shots. So, I think offensively what we’ve been trying to do showed up in the game, which is good.”
Four Tigers were in double figures with Glen Davis off the bench opening his LSU career with 16 points, 13 rebounds and one block in 24 minutes.
Tack Minor added 13 points, Antonio Hudson 11 and Regis Koundjia 10. LSU shot 43.5 percent for the game, 6-of-18 from the three-point range and 76.7 percent at the free throw line. The Tigers out rebounded the Wave, 45-30 with 16 offensive boards and had 16 assists and 12 turnovers.
Tulane was paced by the 13 points of Marcus Kinzer the only player in double figures as Tulane shot 39.7 percent from the floor (23-of-58), 4-of-20 from the arc.
In the second half, the Tigers outscored Tulane, 12-1, to open the margin to 46-22 with 16:45 to go in the game and the lead went to as much as 37 points at 80-43 with 4:29 to play in the game.
“Defensively, I thought we were pretty solid the whole night,” said Brady. “We were committed to the stance and made it tough for them to run things that they wanted to. Like any good defensive possession, I thought we rebounded the ball pretty consistently all night. On top of that, offensively, we only turned the ball over 12 times trying to play more quickly than we have in the past, which is good. We took care of the ball and made some nice decisions.”
The win for the Tigers was their 48th straight home win against Louisiana schools dating back to Dec. 6, 1988 and their 54th consecutive regular season home non-conference win in the Maravich Center. The Tigers are also now 43-0 in the Brady era when scoring 80 points or more in a contest. LSU will play for their 11th in-season tournament title in school history Sunday when they face the Cajuns, a team they last met and beat in a regular season game in Dec. 2001.
The Tigers starting lineup in the game consisted of one senior (Hudson), a junior (Darrel Mitchell) and three sophomores (Brandon Bass, Tack Minor and Ross Neltner). Neltner had a career scoring night of seven points.