BATON ROUGE — Prior to facing its first ranked opponent of the season, the LSU men’s basketball posted its second blowout victory over an in-state opponent. On Monday, the Tigers routed Nicholls State, 104-57, in front of a paid crowd of 7,427 in the Maravich Center.
Members of the Geaux Zone on LSUsports.net can watch on-demand video of tonight’s game.
LSU (2-0) had little trouble with the smaller Colonels, shooting 57.1 percent from the field (44 of 77) and out-rebounded Nicholls State, 59-20. The Tigers also posted 33 second-chance points and nine blocked shots.
Forward Tyrus Thomas led five Tigers in double figures scoring with 22 points on 10-of-11 shooting, grabbing 12 rebounds. Glen Davis dominated the lane with 19 points and 13 rebounds, while Darnell Lazare (16), Darrel Mitchell (13) and Garrett Temple (10) rounded out the top-five scorers for LSU.
Starting forward Tasmin Mitchell had seven points and 11 rebounds in 20 minutes of play.
Nicholls State (0-2) shot only 32.8 percent from the field (20 of 61), including 9-of-28 from three-point range. James Dixon came off the bench to score 10 points to lead the Colonels. Three others scored nine points, including forward Stefan Blaszczynski, center Chris Paige and forward Ryan Bathie.
The Colonels scored the first basket of the game, but managed only a three-pointers over the next 8:14 to fall behind 21-5 with 11:24 to play in the first half. During that span, no one on the undersized Colonels’ front count could stop the 6-9, 310-pound Davis, who had eight points.
With Davis taking a breather, Thomas took over the paint with a tip-in and a 15-foot jumper.
Nicholls State scored five straight to get within 13, 27-14, but the Tigers matched with nine of their own on baskets by Davis, Darrel Mitchell, Magnum Rolle and Darnell Lazare. LSU led 36-14 with 5:42 to play before the half.
LSU scored 11 of the half’s final 15 points to lead 49-20 at the break. The much bigger and faster Tigers out-rebounded Nicholls State 29-9 and shot 54.1 percent from the field (20 of 37). Davis had his double double in only 15 minutes, tallying 12 points and 11 rebounds before intermission.
Nicholls State shot only 33.3 percent (9 of 27) including 2-of-10 three pointers.
Early in the second half, a three pointer by Davis started a 10-2 run that pushed the LSU lead to 66-31 with 13:34 to play. The Tigers led by no fewer than 35 for the duration of the half.
LSU makes its first road trip of the 2005-06 season when it travels to Morgantown, W.Va., to take on No. 13 West Virginia (2-1) at 3:30 p.m. CT. On Monday, the Mountaineers lost to No. 2 Texas on a second-chance basket with three seconds to play in the Guardians Classic in Kansas City, Mo.
The game against West Virginia will be broadcast by ESPN Regional. Live streaming audio from the game will be available on LSUsports.net, with the broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge).
LSU HEA D COACH JOHN BRADY
Opening Statement…
“I think our team tonight, defensively, had more involvement tonight than it did the other night against Southern. I read the quotes from Rod Spivery in the paper about the defense of Texas A&M, and he said something to the effect that ‘don’t get me wrong, Texas and LSU are good teams, but no one took us out of our offense the way Texas A&M did with the pressure they applied.’ I read that to our guys. Even though we won by 30 against Southern, we didn’t have the involvement that we needed to and the animation and the intensity of it. I think tonight they responded to that.”
“Regardless of the opponent, I want opposing teams to think that we defend well and rebound well and play hard. I think we did that tonight throughout the game. I think people see the athleticism of a couple of our players, but I think the last 12 minutes or 11 minutes of the game we had five freshmen on the floor. We needed to do that to let those guys play. I think our team played well defensively, for the most part, throughout the game. Their player, Stefan (Blaszczynski), he had 20 points at Indiana the other night, and we really made it a point to make it difficult for him and to go at him with the ball and make him guard. It kind of worked. When he did get shots up, he was contested. We got him in foul trouble because we went at him a little bit. The game was won the way I wanted to win it tonight.”
“The next challenge is playing a very very experienced, well-coached team in West Virginia on their home floor, who had Texas beat and Texas beat them at the buzzer tonight. The quality of the West Virginia team is quite good. We hear that they’ve sold out the game already for us on Saturday, so they’re expecting to see two good college basketball teams play.”
On the status of Kentrell Gransberry…
“Something I want to address early, Kentrell Gransberry, I met with his mom and she’s a wonderful lady and I met with Kentrell. He signed early, and he knew we would have Brandon Bass coming back for all we knew. That was before the season even started. I was under the impression that he wanted to come back to Baton Rouge, his home, and play at LSU and graduate from LSU.”
“Whatever role that he needed to fulfill he would do that. As it moved along he wanted a bigger role on our team. He felt like the playing time he was going to get wasn’t going to be there as much as maybe he would have liked. We talked about sitting out and redshirting, but even at that our discussion went to the fact that he would be in the same spot next year because everybody on our team is back. I don’t know those things. I think some players get hurt, some players go pro, some players get better. I don’t know about who plays when and at what time do they develop.”
“In order now to give a release, I could choose not to release a player. I’ve never done that. I can turn down requested releases from certain schools if I don’t want to release him to a certain school. Kentrell has come back and asked for releases to go to UL-Monroe, Southeastern or South Alabama at this time. Those are schools where he could go immediately and be guaranteed playing time next year. He’s a fine young guy, and I’m disappointed that he wouldn’t stay with us.”
On the status of Alex Farrer…
“Alex will redshirt this year because he thinks he needs more maturity. He needs to learn, and he’s probably correct in that assumption. I didn’t come to that with that, he came to us with that. He knew when Tack (Minor) arrives our perimeter will be moved around a little bit. He saw the benefit of how it’s done for Garrett (Temple) and how it’s done for Tyrus Thomas. So, Alex will redshirt on the team, which I think is a real positive thing for him and the mature thing to do.”
NICHOLLS STATE HEAD COACH J.P. PIPER
“LSU is pretty good. The Colonels weren’t up to the task tonight. LSU is an extremely talented team. We knew they would be. Coach Brady always does a great job of preparing his team. They really made us look bad at times out there. There were a few positives. You just have to move on to the next one. We want to play good teams. We want to play teams that expose us. LSU certainly did that tonight.”
“We felt like we could defend what they were going to try to do. We told the kids coming into the game they would be in the correct position defensively and they are going to make shots. I’m not sure we had the ‘meat’ in the lane to hold them off of the boards. My worst fears proved true tonight. How do you tell a kid that is giving up 60 pounds not to get shoved under the basket? It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Our kids competed and fought. I told them at one point in the second half, it isn’t like this in the Southland Conference. We don’t have to play this team but one time this year. There is no one in the Southland Conference that can do that to us consistently like LSU did.”