BATON ROUGE — The 24th-ranked LSU men’s basketball fought off a scrappy Auburn team to remain perfect in Southeastern Conference play, 84-69, in front of 11,131 on Wednesday at the Maravich Center.
LSU (15-5, 7-0 SEC) ran its SEC home winning streak to 13, including four straight overall again Auburn (9-9, 1-6 SEC). Auburn lost for the sixth time in as many road games in 2005-06.
A 12-3 run during a five-minute stretch of the second half proved to be the difference, as LSU broke a 56-56 tie and took a nine-point lead with 7:12 to play. Auburn would get no closer than seven throughout.
LSU, making return trip to the Top 25 this week, was again led by senior Darrel Mitchell, with Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas serving as a strong supporting cast.
Mitchell scored a game-high 27 points on 8-of-11 shooting, while hitting all nine of his free throw attempts and a pair of three pointers. The 5-11 guard also had eight assists.
Davis and Thomas each added 17. Thomas was perfect from the field (7 of 7) and had a team-best nine rebounds.
LSU shot 63 percent from the field, including 71.4 (15 of 21) in the second half.
Auburn had four players in double figures scoring, led by Frank Tolbert with 15.
The teams combined for 43 personal fouls, two technical fouls and 32 turnovers in the game, as neither were able to get into an offensive rhythm until LSU took control late.
After falling behind 13-11 early in the contest, LSU scored the next seven points to bring the Maravich Center crowd alive. Auburn head coach Jeff Lebo was called for a technical foul during the run after arguing that Tasmin Mitchell stepped out of bounds on a baseline jumper.
A spate of LSU turnovers kept Auburn close midway through the half, while LSU head coach John Brady also took exception to the officiating and was charged with a technical foul.
LSU led 21-18 at the 8:14 mark of the first half.
Auburn got within one on a jumper by Quantez Robertson two minutes later. LSU again responded with five straight to push the advantage to 31-25.
A four-point trip that included layups by Davis and Darnell Lazare gave LSU it’s biggest lead, 37-29, with less than two minutes to play. Lazare, a junior, made the first three-pointer of his LSU career as the lead built to double figures, 40-30.
Auburn made three free throws in the final minute of the half to trail 40-33 at the break.
The battle continued in the early part of the second half, as Auburn took its first lead since the 12:28 mark of the first half, 54-52.
Consecutive baskets by Davis and a three-point play by Thomas gave LSU a six-point lead, 63-57, with less than 10 minutes to play.
Three minutes later, Thomas’ dunk and Darrel Mitchell‘s three-pointer forced Lebo to take a timeout trailing by the largest margin of the half, 68-59.
LSU HEAD COACH JOHN BRADY
Opening Statement…
“I thought Auburn played well. I think they played extremely hard from what I saw. I told our team at halftime that I thought they were playing a little bit harder than we were at times. An impressive stat about Auburn, they got 14 offensive rebounds and I would venture to say that half of those were because they outhustled us to the ball. We made them miss. We held them to 41 percent shooting, which is good, but then we gave up too many loose balls when they missed. It was batted around, and they seemed to come up with those balls which allowed them to shoot it again and maybe even a third time. So, that kept them in the game.”
“But I thought the second half offensively we got better. We played better. I thought we rebounded the ball a little bit better the second half. We got to the foul line the second half, which is what we wanted to do the whole game. Outside of turning the ball over 19 times, from an offensive standpoint I thought we were quite efficient. We score 84 points. We shoot 63 percent from the floor, 50 percent from the three-point line and 75 percent from the free throw line and we shot 28 free throws. So, offensively we were pretty consistent and efficient the whole game, particularly the second half. But I think our turnovers allowed them to get some baskets and then gave them a few too many second opportunities. But you’ve got to credit Auburn for running down some loose balls on us. I thought Auburn played extremely hard, but I thought that we did the things that were necessary to win the game.”
“I thought it was a good college basketball game outside of us giving it away a few times too many. I thought it was a good game for us to play at home. Again, I thought our student body was outstanding. They were here early, stayed late and I appreciate what they did.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On the success of the season so far…
“It’s a real good feeling, I haven’t been on this side of the fence since high school. We just have to stay on this side and keep things rolling.”
On the team playing sloppy early on…
“With teams like that they come at you hard and we didn’t play as well as we should have in the first half. The second half we cam out and got some key stops and were able to pick up our offensive game.”
On the crowd’s reaction to the referees…
“They were beating us up and the referees weren’t calling anything. That’s just the way it goes when you’re undefeated in the league and you’re the big dogs. We just have to fight that adversity that the teams are going to bring to us.”
AUBURN HEAD COACH JEFF LEBO
“We did a lot of good things tonight. We battled our tails off. I am proud of our effort. We had to overcome a lot of adversity. We showed signs tonight for about 33 to 34 minutes of how well we can play. We are still missing Ronny (LeMelle). He has been struggling. He’s not getting as many rebounds and he is struggling shooting the basketball. We are so limited in many ways that we have to have everyone playing well. We cut down on our turnovers and did a good job handling the ball.”
“Really, the big difference in the game was (Darrel) Mitchell. He made unbelievable shots at crucial times. A lot of them were on his own. He just made great plays on his own. He’s had a heck of a year.”
AUBURN G FRANK TOLBERT
“We were in it the whole game. A couple of times here and there and a couple of fast breaks, it is a totally different game. We played very well tonight, but LSU is a good team. I thought we executed well tonight. It was a good game.”
“We were planning on them to go inside from the get go. That was nothing new. They went to their bread and butter down the stretch.”