HARTFORD, Conn. — LSU again put up the fight of their lives on the home court of a nationally-ranked team, but fell in the closing seconds, 67-66, to No. 2 Connecticut Saturday afternoon at the Hartford Civic Center.
The Tigers are now 8-5 on the season, having lost all five games by a combined total of 11 points. UConn survived losing both games this week, going to 12-1 on the year going into a Big East game at Hartford Monday night against Cincinnati. LSU enters Southeastern Conference play for the remainder of the year, traveling to Fayetteville to take on the University of Arkansas, Wednesday night at 7 p.m. (No TV, LSU Sports Radio Network, Geaux Zone).
Hilton Armstrong scored six of his 11 points in the final four minutes to help Connecticut rally from 14 points down and beat LSU. In foul trouble for most of the first half, Armstrong came through down the stretch for the Huskies against the physical Tigers. His dunk with 3:28 left put UConn ahead, 61-59, the Huskies’ first lead since the 17:45 mark in the first half. But LSU tied it on Tyrus Thomas’ bucket on the next possession.
The Huskies leaned on the 6-foot-11 Armstrong again, who scored inside and gave UConn the lead for good. He followed it up with a soft hook on the Huskies’ next possession for a 65-61 lead.
After the teams traded baskets, Darrel Mitchell, who led the Tigers with 21 points, hit two of three free throws with 9.4 seconds left and the Huskies’ lead was 67-66. After Marcus Williams missed both free throws on the next UConn possession, Mitchell’s 3-point attempt at the buzzer banged off the backboard.
Rudy Gay finished with 19 points for UConn and Rashad Anderson scored 10 and had a team-high 10 rebounds. Thomas finished with 15 points for the Tigers with 13 points and a team-high seven blocks. Glen Davis and Tasmin Mitchell had 12 points each.
The Huskies had their hands full early with Davis in the paint. He drew a crowd each time he touched the ball and although he had just four points in the first half, he had three assists. Garrett Temple and Thomas scored consecutive baskets inside each from a Davis assist to push the LSU lead to 29-19 with 5:45 left in the period.
It was part of a 6-0 run that ended with Thomas’ dunk that gave the Tigers their largest lead at 14 and drew an immediate timeout from UConn. The Connecticut fans broke into boos as their team trotted to the bench for the timeout and that prompted Coach Jim Calhoun to look up into the stands and motion for the crowd to boo more.
That all changed in the next two UConn possessions. Jeff Adrien had a strong put back and Anderson stole the inbounds pass and hit a jumper. This time the crowd’s response was a deafening roar of approval as John Brady called time out to try to stop the swing. Anderson went on to hit a pair of 3s as the Huskies closed the half on a 7-2 run to trail 37-30 at the break.
LSU for the night shot 46.3 percent from the field (25-of-54), 3-of-9 from the arc, but just 13-of-21 at the line (61.9 percent). Connecticut shot 32.8 percent for the game (22-of-67), but hit 80 percent at the line, 20-of-25. LSU out rebounded the Huskies, 41-39. In all there were 21 blocks in the game, 10 by LSU and 11 by UConn.
POSTGAME QUOTES
UConn Head Coach Jim Calhoun
“Along with the Gonzaga win at Maui, that was probably the best win we’ve had this year….I think the way we won, shooting 30 percent from the field and having to dig out a win in a game where we couldn’t buy a basket ?
mainly because LSU played very good defense, by the way. LSU is very talented ? probably a little bit young. Davis is just such a load to handle. I love the Mitchell kid, the point guard, I think he’s a terrific, terrific basketball player. Matter of fact, I love the whole team …”
“I really think they run their stuff exceptionally well. I thought they got good shots. I thought that we got better on defense as the game progressed. I thought we did a terrific job of holding them to 29 percent in the second half, after getting blasted early in the first half. For whatever reason, the lack of offense discouraged our defense. Today, we made a step forward, at least for us, in the second half, by understanding that there are other ways to win games than by making three pointers, or getting fast break dunks, etc. And we found ways to win that basketball game.”
“John’s team played great defense. They’re only going to get better. Those young kids are absolutely sensational. I mean, they really are good….They probably have the most deceptive record, eight and five, in the country.”
“When I sit down in another hour or so and watch my Patriots, I’m going to feel very, very good about the way we fought back. We did that in Maui, but we didn’t do that on Tuesday. We didn’t fight back.”
“I thought we gutted it out.”
“Hilton Armstrong had the loudest 11 points I think I’ve ever seen. Rashad Anderson couldn’t make a basket, but he had 10 rebounds to get a double double. That’s the toughest I’ve ever seen Rudy Gay play. Not the best, the toughest. He was tough.”
LSU Head Coach John Brady
“We’ve had several of these, and we’ve only been able to win one, and that was at West Virginia. We’ve lost five of these by 11 points. We have some deficiencies, but I like our team. I continue to encourage our team and tell them to keep getting better because we have played some of the best teams in the country, I feel like, and we’ve played them to the wire.”
“We came in here and we took good care of the ball compared to what we usually do. We had 14 turnovers; we beat them on the boards. I thought our best players shot most of the balls. We got to the free throw line 21
times. We’re not a great free throw shooting team, and it showed. And they’re not a good free throw shooting team, either, and they gave us two at the end, but they go 20 for 23 at that point, which was what they haven’t done the last couple of games.”
“I thought we would get a good shot from them considering what happened at Marquette. Coach Calhoun does a great job with his team. It was a good college basketball game. At the end, we had no time outs, I thought the shot Darrel Mitchell got from a foot behind the arc was as good as we were going to get on the fly. I’ve seen other teams make those. We weren’t able to get it, but I thought it was as good a look as we were going to get at the time.”
“They beat us, but I think our young team went toe to toe. There were times in the second half that we had four freshmen on the floor….I don’t know if it’s youth or what it is but we haven’t been able to win too many of these, but we’ve played them.”