BATON ROUGE — LSU got the lead early and just like last year in Corvallis fought off every Oregon State challenge to win, 67-61, over the Beavers Saturday at the Pete Maravich Center.
The 7-4 Tigers will now take a short Christmas break before resuming practice on Dec. 26 in preparation for another home game against a Pac-10 opponent, Washington, scheduled for Dec. 29 at 2 p.m.
The Tigers won for the seventh consecutive seventh consecutive time at home dating back to last season as Marcus Thornton led LSU with 20 points, the seventh time this season he has scored at least 20 points in a game. Terry Martin had 15 points and had six assists and no turnovers in 40 minutes for LSU and Anthony Randolph hit 8-of-12 at the free throw line to finish with 14 points.
Oregon State got 14 from Roeland Schaftenaar and 13 from Seth Tarver and Omari Johnson.
All but two of Thornton’s points came on three pointers, but his last five points clinched the game for the Tigers, including what was an off-balance three as the shot-clock buzzer was about to go up that gave LSU the 67-61 advantage with 12 seconds left.
The junior college transfer made two free throws with 55 seconds left to give LSU a 64-58 lead. A few seconds later, a 3-pointer by Schaftenaar cut the Tigers’ lead in half before Thornton’s final trey.
Three 3-pointers by Thornton ignited a 19-7 run which gave LSU control in the first half. The Tigers led 38-31 at halftime. Sparked by Schaftenaar’s three baskets, one a 3-pointer, the Beavers pulled within 49-47 with just over 12 minutes left. Thornton answered with a 3-pointer on the next possession. The Tigers then held a four- to eight-point lead until Schaftenaar’s 3-ponter with 47 seconds left.
The Tigers continued to struggle from the field as they did on Wednesday against Wichita State, hitting just 35.1 percent in the game, 10-of-28 in the first half, 10-of-29 in the second half. But LSU was better from the three-point arc as LSU was 10-of-23 for 43.5 percent. Thornton was 6-of-10 to help that percentage, one of the better percentages LSU has had in recent years with that many attempts.
Oregon State shot 42.1 percent from the field (24-of-57), but while LSU was 17-of-22 (77.3 percent) at the free throw line, OSU was just 7-of-14.
However, for the third game in a row, the Tigers were out rebounded by double digits as Oregon State had a 43-33 advantage. LSU was out rebounded on Dec. 15 by 14 by Northwestern State and Wichita State (Dec. 19) has a 19-rebound advantage.
When the Tigers play on Saturday against Washington (2 p.m.), the game will be the first part of the “Take A Kid To The Game” weekend as both the men and the women’s teams will offer $1 youth tickets for the game with the purchase of a regular priced $11 adult ticket. The LSU women will play Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. against UNO.
LSU HEAD COACH JOHN BRADY QUOTES
Opening statement…
“It was a good win. It was good to get a win against a team from another good conference. It was good to beat somebody like that regardless of how it happened. I thought our team had numerous opportunities (for good shots), particularly in the first ten minutes of the second half. We just couldn’t convert. The ball was just falling right at the rim.”
“At the end of the game we didn’t have to score the ball but everybody was running towards the ball. Have you ever seen a little league game and all the little guys don’t know how to play without the ball and are running around saying ?give me, give me the ball.’ That is what we looked like the last 20 seconds of the game. As opposed to running the play we wanted to run where the floor was spread and we just kind of run the play. If it doesn’t happen it is very easy to run again. We have done it numerous times in practice. They were going to foul us, so we didn’t have to do anything. The series before our last we had a wide open shot for Marcus (Thornton) but he shoots one off one leg from about 30 feet out. Maybe the plays we are running for him are getting too old.”
“It was a good win but we still have some deficiencies. We took care of the ball. The other night against Wichita State we had 11 turnovers and tonight we 10. When we can’t consistently stabilize the game by rebounding the ball, the field goal stat needs to be pretty good. Tonight it wasn’t very good, except for our three point percentage. It balanced off our shooting percentage with our inability to make any shots from within ten feet of the goal.”