BATON ROUGE — The Kentucky Wildcats were able to outscore the LSU Tigers in the final moments of the game Saturday afternoon allowing Kentucky the chance to get out of Baton Rouge with a 67-63 victory.
LSU falls to 9-15 and 2-8 in the league, while Kentucky is now 13-10 and 7-3 in the SEC. LSU travels to Arkansas on Wednesday night for a 7 p.m. split-regional telecast on Raycom Sports.
LSU held a 30-28 halftime advantage, but Kentucky spurted out of the locker room to a big lead, but still gave LSU chances in the final minutes to tie the game.
Kentucky squandered an 8-point lead in the second half before taking the lead for good, at 54-51, on a 3-pointer by Ramel Bradley with 6:36 left.
The Wildcats had some anxious moments, coming up empty down the stretch on three straight possessions after a Crawford field goal put Kentucky up 61-57. But LSU which started the game strong and led for much of the first half couldn’t capitalize.
After coming to within two points, 61-59, Terry Martin missed a 3-point shot; one possession later, Anthony Randolph made one-of-two free throws to leave the Tigers back by one. Kentucky’s Derrick Jasper extended the Wildcats’ lead back to three points, 63-60, with two free throws with 27 seconds left.
The final 10 seconds featured a flurry of scoring, including four free throws by Bradley. Martin knocked down a 3-pointer in between.
Again at home, LSU was unable to match the Wildcats in the shooting department as Kentucky shot 56 percent in the second half (14-of-25) to LSU’s 11-of-31 (35.5 percent). In SEC home games, LSU was shooting 19 percent outside the arc and against the Wildcats, LSU hit just 5-of-18 shots (27.8 percent) compared to Kentucky’s 7-of-14 (50 percent).
Joe Crawford led Kentucky with 21 points, while Ramel Bradley had 16 points and six assists and Patrick Patterson had 14 points.
Randolph, the LSU freshman from Dallas, had his sixth double double of the year with 24 points and 14 rebounds to go with four steals in 38 minutes. He had 22 points in the win at Florida on Wednesday. The only other player in double figures was Terry Martin with 12. The SEC’s leading scorer, Marcus Thornton, was held to just nine points on 4-of-14 shooting.
LSU INTERIM HEAD COACH BUTCH PIERRE
On if Marcus Thornton rushed his shot on a play near the end of the game…
“He kind of rushed thing; it was a double-stack screen up top for him and he was supposed to turn the corner and look for Anthony Randolph on the post-and-lob. If he didn’t have hit, he was going to pull the ball back out and run something else. I learned something from that and I’ll never put Marcus in that situation again. If I had been coaching them the whole year that wouldn’t have happened, trust me. They also had a one point lead and Marcus went down on the other end and, I guess out of frustration, he fouled a guy in a situation where there was time to score.”
On the competitiveness of the team…
“We did compete until the end even in the second half when we were down by nine points and we fought back and made some plays by executing on the offensive end and putting together some stops on defense. We put ourselves in position to win the game. Me being the competitive person that I am, I second guess a couple of the things that I did right there at the end, but I was trying to give them some rest with the timeouts because I knew they were tired and they did get a stop after that so that was the right thing to do. Right there, with 40 seconds left on the clock, maybe we should have worked a little harder.
“My hat’s off to Kentucky. After losing to Vanderbilt, they came in and they played hard and executed and had a great second half. They got something out of their team with two seniors that they probably needed on the road. Joe Crawford hit some unbelievable shots in the shot in front of their bench on the fall away and the one inside off the glass. He just made play after play and that’s what it takes to win on the road in the SEC ? a senior, one of the best players in the league, to step up, and that’s what he did. My hat’s off to them, they came in and did what they were supposed to do.”
On if the team settled for too many perimeter shots…
“I don’t think we settled for too many perimeter shots, I just think that after the success we had against Florida last game I tried to tell the guys and they understood that was why the game was close. The tempo was different today against Kentucky. They didn’t force the tempo so it was going to be a half-court game and in order for us to be able to make some baskets we need to hit a couple of easy ones in transition, which we did. We had to get some off turnovers, and we did that also. In the half court, we had to execute and get the ball into the post and we got the ball into the post. Anthony Randolph and Chris Johnson played a lot of minutes and they had to be hard and tough with the ball/ A couple of times, they had some fumbles in there and during crucial times couldn’t get a clean shot.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On today’s game…
“The whole team played hard. We wanted to win this game real bad. We did everything in our power to try and win this game; we just didn’t knock down some late shots.”
On the importance of G Garrett Temple…
“He holds the team together. He is the captain of this team. He keeps us calm when we need to be and he gets us amped up when we need to be.”
On what the team’s goals are for the rest of the season…
“Our goal is to improve every game. We have been doing that these last couple of games. Our goal is to continue that. We are going to come out and play hard every game.”
On his final shot of the game…
“It was a good look but it rolled off my hand funny. I thought it still had a chance but it fell short. I had to get over it and get back on defense.”
On guarding G Joe Crawford…
“He is a strong and physical guy. When I got fatigued he started to go to the goal. He is a veteran player and he did what he is supposed to do.”
KENTUCKY HEAD COACH BILLY GILLISPSIE
Opening statement…
“It’s a great win for us against a team that’s probably playing with their greatest level of confidence all year long. They’re a hard team no matter what their confidence level is. They’re long and athletic. They have the ability to shoot the basketball and rebound the ball and put it back in. Their defense has been good all year. It’s a huge win for us.”
On making no substitutions in the second half…
“It’s just how it played out. I thought our guys played very well out there. In the first half, we had too many different combinations where we turned the ball over. Our defense was fantastic today. When you take away the turnovers that led to baskets, their percentage would have been pretty low, and it was 11 out of 31 in the second half, which is what we were kind of shooting for in the first half. We just made too many boneheaded plays that allowed us not to get a chance to play five on five. For the most part in the second half, we didn’t turn it over quite as bad, but we still had too many turnovers that led directly to baskets.”
On Joe Crawford’s aggressive play…
“Coaches don’t have to yell at guys all the time to get their point across. Joe (Crawford) is a senior. He’s seen just about everything and done a lot. I told Joe before the game that I wanted him to be very aggressive. I told him that for a long time. Now all of a sudden, Joe thinks he’s a defensive stopper, which he has been. He’s been great. I really believe that he has greater pride on defense than he does offensively now. It takes a great deal of energy to be able to guard like we want to guard, and maybe that’s why he defers on the offensive end more than I would like for him to, but for us to be at our best, Joe needs to be at his best. He’s been fantastic, but I want him to score 20-plus points a game. I wanted him to get up eight threes (3-point shots) at Vanderbilt the other night, and we didn’t get that done. He needs to be more aggressive offensively continuing the mindset that he’s had defensively because he’s had the best shooter on every team.”
KENTUCKY GUARD JOE CRAWFORD
On rebounding from the Vanderbilt loss…
“I think we showed some heart. It’s tough. That was one of the worst whippings I’ve ever had since I started playing basketball. I knew it was going to be tough in here to come out here positively and win a ballgame.”
On the importance of this game…
“This is a really important game. This can decide who can go up or down from here on. We came out here, and we fought hard. We knew we needed to win this ballgame.”