BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers played what may have been its best overall game of the season Wednesday night at the Pete Maravich Center and it couldn’t have come at a better time as the Tigers downed South Carolina, 79-64, to even its record at 1-1 in the league.
The game, LSU’s first at home in 30 days, was a showcase of the Tigers’ offense and the ability to guard on defense when necessary.
Freshman forward Glen Davis was dominating on the inside scoring a career high 28 points and grabbing a career high 14 rebounds, including eight offensive. Davis made 12-of-17 field goals, including his only three-point attempt of the game. Darrel Mitchell had a strong 18-point night, hitting five-of-eight treys, with four assists, while Brandon Bass had 12 points and Antonio Hudson had 11. LSU’s other starter, Tack Minor, had seven points with six assists and three steals.
Hudson was honored in a pre-game ceremony with a basketball commemorating his 1,000 career points that occurred during the team’s long road trip. Coach John Brady presented the Grambling, La., senior the ball and Hudson presented it to his parents who were courtside for the game.
Carlos Powell had 16 points to lead the Gamecocks (9-5, 1-2) while Tre Kelly had 11 and Tarence Kinsey had 10.
“Well, first I was proud of our team,” said LSU Coach John Brady of his Tigers, now 7-5 and 1-1. “I was proud of our players. The impression that I have right now of the game is that everything that we wanted to be kind of showed up (Wednesday). We ran the floor well. We had some baskets in transition. We took care of the ball. We didn’t make a lot of careless turnovers. We eliminated what we have been talking about — turnovers that lead to easy baskets by the other team. We were able to control it. We made them earn baskets in the half court.”
The Gamecocks took the lead early, opening up four point leads at 7-3, 9-5 and 11-7 before LSU came back to take its first lead at the 14:28 mark on a jumper by Davis at 12-11. South Carolina came back at took its last lead at 18-17 on a free throw at the 10:26 mark.
From there LSU went on a 14-3 run as Davis hit a free throw for the 18-18 tie, Mitchell hit a trey to give LSU the lead for good, Davis hit two consecutive buckets and a free throw, Hudson a jumper and then the Davis top of the key three-pointers to go up 31-21 with 4:26 to go in the half, the margin LSU would have at the half, 39-29.
The Tigers pushed the lead to 13 twice in the early moments of the second half before the Gamecocks closed the game to seven at 47-40 on two free throws by Powell at the 15:55 mark, giving everyone to wonder if this was the second half lull that the Tigers had been fighting.
But the only lull would be the timeouts that were called as LSU scored the next 16 points to push the lead to 23, 63-40, before South Carolina would score again at the 10:11 mark.
The points came from all over the floor — a jumper by Mitchell, two free throws by Bass, a three-pointer off the bench from Ross Neltner, a Mitchell trey, a jumper and layup from Davis and a layup from Minor.
South Carolina would get no closer than the final margin of 15 the rest of the way as the Tigers held serve on the home court in the SEC.
“We played a team that has done some nice things on the road,” said Brady. “That’s why I was proud of our team for playing as well as we played on both ends of the floor. Hopefully, this is something that we can build upon and come back in here against Ohio State at home on Saturday who is another good team — a strong team.”
The LSU-Ohio State game is slated for 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Pete Maravich Center. Tickets are available at www.LSUsports.net and at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office the remainder of the week.