BATON ROUGE — LSU played a strong first half and cruised to a 95-79 win Wednesday night at the Maravich Center over the University of New Orleans Privateers.
With the win, the Tigers are now 3-0 on the season, heading into a noon Saturday game at home against West Virginia. Tickets for the game will be on sale through Saturday morning on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net and at the upper ticket windows of the Maravich Center beginning at 10:30 a.m.
LSU jumped out to a 9-0 lead 97 seconds into the contest as freshman Glen Davis made a lay-up, Darrel Mitchell nailed a three-pointer (the third straight game he has made LSU’s first trey on the first attempt of the game), a lay-up by Tack Minor and a jumper by Brandon Bass. The lead would continue to expand as LSU’s up-tempo game was transitioning well, moving to 27-11 with 10:25 to go in the first half and to as much as 27, 48-21 on a Mitchell trey at the 3:48 mark. LSU went to the dressing room at the half, up 49-29.
“Our team offensively to start the game the first 15 or 16 minutes, we were as good as we could be at this point in the season this early,” said Coach John Brady. “I really thought from an offensive standpoint the first 15 or 16 minutes we were quite good. Then I thought defensively, we were fine, too. Then I thought our team, when they knew they were going to win the game, I thought we lost a little bit of the edge that we started the game with. But I want our team to get beyond that. I want them to play with the same kind of conviction, intensity and execution regardless of the score.”
All five starters were in double figures led by Mitchell’s second career 20-point game as he had four treys in his 20 points effort. Antonio Hudson added 18 points, Glen Davis had 16 for the second time this young season and Tack Minor doubled up with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Hudson’s 18 gave him five straight games in double figures dating back to last season, the longest double figure scoring string of his LSU career.
Bo McCalebb continued his strong play with 35 points, hitting 12-of-24 shots, including four treys to lead UNO. Ben Elias had 14 for the 1-3 Privateers, Shawn Malloy and Chad Barnes each had 11.
“We let McCalebb do some penetration on us, but I think he’s quite good,” said Brady. “He’s preseason MVP of the Sun Belt and I think he’s an SEC player. I don’t think there’s any question about that with his ability to get by people and get in the paint.”
The Tigers were about to keep the game in the 20-point range most of the first 11 minutes of the second half before UNO made a run to cut it to 14 with 8:53 to play. But LSU did enough to keep the margin separated and move on to the next game.
LSU has now won 50 consecutive games versus Louisiana competition in the Maravich Center and 56 straight regular season non-conference games at home. The Tigers are now 45-0 in the Brady era, 3-0 this year, when scoring 80 or more points in a game. The Tigers scoring halves of 49 and 46 points give LSU five straight halves this season scoring 40 or more points, starting with the second half of the season opening contest with Tulane.