BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers shook off the rust of two weeks of dead week and final exam time to put together a positive night of basketball, scoring an 83-74 win over Northwestern State Saturday night at the Pete Maravich Center.
It was the fourth win in five games for the Tigers and in all four wins, the Tigers scored at least 80 points in the game, running LSU’s record to 46-0 in the Brady era when scoring 80 points and the Tigers won for the 51st consecutive time against Louisiana competition dating back to Dec. 8, 1988.
The Tigers play their final home game of the 2004 portion of the schedule on Monday at 7 p.m. against McNeese State University.
Brandon Bass doubled up for LSU with 22 points and a career high 14 rebounds. The Baton Rouge sophomore saw his free throw streak of makes that dated back to last year stop at 24 after making the first seven in the contest Saturday. He finished the game 6-of-10 from the field and 10-of-11 at the line.
All five starters were in double figures with Bass being joined by the 20 points and five assists of Darrel Mitchell, with Tack Minor getting 12 points and eight assists, Antonio Hudson 12 points and Glen Davis 10. Northwestern State, 5-3, losing for the first time after five consecutive wins got 19 points from Jermaine Wallace and 14 from Jermaine Spencer.
“The object of the game is to win,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “Our team was able to win that game (Saturday) and I was proud of them for it. Eighty-three points is pretty good. Offensively, we’re fine in that way. We struggled a little bit with the odd-man front zone again, but did some things against it that got us more down on the baseline where we could operate against it a little bit better.”
The Tigers scored the first five points of the game as Mitchell hit the opening three for LSU for the fifth consecutive game and Bass made his first two free throws. But LSU could get no more than a six points lead in the first 10 minutes and Northwestern State tied it at 23-23 with 8:12 to go in the first half on a layup by Wallace. Two minutes later, a Wallace three-pointer gave the Demons their first of two leads at 26-25. After taking a 28-27 lead with 5:48 to go in the first half, the Tigers closes on a 15-6 run to go to the dressing room, up 42-34 at intermission.
LSU advanced the lead to 11 in the first two minutes of the second half, but again Northwestern answered every time the Tigers appeared ready to put the game away, eventually taking the game down to just two points, 64-62, with 7:44 to play. But a 12-2 run gave LSU a 76-64 advantage that would be enough cushion down the stretch over the stingy Demon team.
For the game, LSU shot 44 percent from the field (22-50) and 42.9 percent from the arc (9-of-21). The Tigers got to the line 40 times, making 30, for another fine performance there. LSU out rebounded the Demons, 40-32, and had 19 assists on the 22 made baskets.
Coach Brady commented briefly afterwards on the status of sophomore Regis Koundjia, who was not on the bench for the game. “As some of you may have noticed, Regis Koundjia was not in uniform (Saturday). He has a personal problem I need to talk to him about. I didn’t spend enough time with him (Saturday), and he and I will meet (Sunday). It’s not academically related at all because he’s doing well in school. It’s no violation of team policies or anything like that. I want to put that to rest because he’s a fine young man. Regis and I will visit (Sunday), and after we visit, we’ll have something out on his status with us at this time.”