BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team opened its 2005-06 men’s basketball season with a convincing 84-56 victory over Southern University Friday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The 1-0 Tigers take on Nicholls State on Monday night at 7 p.m. at the Maravich Center. Southern falls to 0-3.
Tasmin Mitchell in his first official game as a college player, led LSU with 19 points, while sophomore Glen Davis and redshirt freshman Tyrus Thomas had 18 points each. Senior Darrel Mitchell had 13 points to round out the double-figure scoring for LSU. Chris Alexander led Southern with 13 points, while Deforrest Riley-Smith added 12.
Davis and Tasmin Mitchell each had double-doubles in the opening game with Davis adding 10 rebounds and Tasmin Mitchell 12 (seven offensive).
LSU had 26 points off Southern’s 15 turnovers and scored 28 points off second chance plays.
LSU led from the beginning, jumping out to a 7-0 lead in the first 85 seconds before Southern quickly called a 30-second timeout. Tasmin Mitchell hit a jumper off a Darrel Mitchell assist, Davis hit a layup and then Darrel Mitchell connected on his first three-pointer of the game. LSU would lead by double figures early, 18-8, at the 11:53 mark and led by as much as 18 points twice in the half before settling for a 15-point, 43-28, halftime lead.
Southern was never able to make a push in the second half as LSU methodically continued to score although at times in the second half the play was a little ragged as the young Tigers of John Brady went out on a couple occasions with five freshmen on the floor.
LSU shot 48.4 percent for the game (31-64) and 4-of-13 at the three-point arc. LSU was 18-of-29 at the free throw line. Southern shot 38.3 percent (23-of-60), 5-of-16 from the arc and 5-of-9 from the free-throw line. LSU out rebounded the Jaguars, 55-23, with LSU getting 22 offensive rebounds.
LSU HEAD COACH JOHN BRADY
Opening Statement…
“First of all I love winning, and we won the game by 30. There was never a question of whether we were going to win the game or not. With me it became how we were going to win the game. We had some growing pains out there a little bit, and there were a lot of times in the game we had five freshmen on the floor. At times it showed. We would get to the verge of putting the team away and something would happen defensively, we couldn’t quite get to the ball or offensively our timing wasn’t quite there to really separate the score. It was not about Southern, or it really wasn’t about playing Nicholls (State) on Monday, it’s about what lies ahead next Saturday at West Virginia. That’s what we’ve got to get ready to go do. Our team just needs to grow up in a hurry. We had some things from a timing standpoint that we need to improve on a little bit. Defensively, we were pretty good at times. I like our team, and it’s going to have some times where it plays really well and have some times early on when it seems to struggle a little bit or our timing’s not quite there. We’re going to take off tomorrow, be back in here Sunday and try to get ourselves ready to go again Monday and go on the road Thanksgiving.”
Southern Head Coach Rob Spivery
On his team’s performance…
I was very pleased with our effort and the way we played against Sacramento. St. on Wednesday night. I thought with that performance we were moving forward and making progress. Tonight we digressed and we have some work to do. We as coaches have to do a better job from a coaching aspect and making sure the players understand what we need to do on the floor. We need to get them to execute better defensively and offensively.
On the rebounding differential…
In the game of basketball there are two areas that really show toughness and that’s defense and rebounding. Tonight we did not show very much toughness out there. The difference on the board showed that. They had as many offensive rebounds as we had total rebounds. That is unacceptable. We have to get better and show more toughness than we showed tonight.