OXFORD, Miss. — The LSU men’s basketball team jumped out to a 12-0 lead and never looked back, defeating short-handed Ole Miss, 83-51, on Saturday afternoon at Tad Smith Coliseum.
LSU (14-3, 2-1 SEC) earned its first road victory in four games this season.
Tasmin Mitchell, who scored a career-best 30 points the last time out, again LSU led with 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting. Garrett Temple added 14 while Marcus Thornton scored 13 and Bo Spencer had 12.
The Tigers shot 48.4 percent (33 of 68) from the field, while holding Ole Miss to 35.6 (22 of 62), incluing 4-of-21 from three-point range.
Ole Miss (10-7, 1-2 SEC) was never close to the Tigers, falling behind by 26 in the first half before a see-saw second half. Terrico White led the Rebels with 22 points on 9-of-16 shooting. Forward Murphy Holloway was the other Rebel in double figures scoring with 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting.
The rest of the Rebels combined to make only 8-of-39 shots (20.5 percent).
The loss was the most lopsided for Ole Miss since 2000, when LSU won 97-53 en route to a Western Division championship and a Sweet 16 appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
LSU led 41-18 at halftime after racing to a 19-2 lead in six minutes. The Tigers built their biggest lead to 73-36 on a Chris Johnson dunk with 6:08 left. Ole Miss never closed within 22 points in the second half.
LSU coach Trent Johnson Postgame Quotes
Opening Statement
“Obviously we played extremely well. I don’t think we could have played a better first half of basketball. We try to pride ourselves on doing three things pretty well, and that’s defending, rebounding and taking care of the ball with a sense of urgency. For the most part I feel we did a good job of that. I feel for Coach Kennedy and his kids because as a coach in this business, I’ve been in his position before when you have two or three of your best players injured, and that’s something you don’t want to see happen. You want to see all of your kids in uniform and able to compete. He’s doing a good job keeping them ready and competing at a high level. I am happy for our group. We’ve been frustrated with our performances on the road. We feel very fortunate, even though we played well, to go on the road and pick up a win in this league. It’s a good thing.”
On LSU’s experience vs. Ole Miss’ youth
“I think from the standpoint of Tasmin Mitchell, Chris Johnson and Garrett Temple, those guys have been around, so there’s the experience factor there. It wasn’t like we were coming in here thinking if we didn’t play well, we would win. This is the same group (Ole Miss) that had a chance to beat Florida on the road and they beat a really good Arkansas team, so we knew we had to be at our best. That’s really hard to do every game in and every game out, but we tried to go inside-out. People have put a lot of pressure and double teamed Tas (Mitchell), and he did a really good job of finding the open man, so hopefully we can continue to do that.”
On defense early in the game
“It was a combination of our position defensive-wise. I think Marcus did a good job, but I also think they had some uncharacteristic turnovers, but that’s what happens when you’re playing with youth. Again with our defensive position, I thought when we had the tendency to chase the ball and gamble, I thought some guys stayed home because I thought they respected this team coming in here knowing that if we gambled, we would be in the same position we were in when we played Alabama on the road.”
Ole Miss Coach Andy Kennedy Postgame Quotes
On going from Wednesday’s win to today’s loss…
“I wish I had an idea, because I would have tried to do something about it. I thought against Arkansas we were the more aggressive team, the more physical team. I thought we were on the attack. Today was the total opposite. No question LSU was more physical in their approach. We started out slowly and never responded. They came out and hit us right in the mouth. We never got off the mat, we never got up and fought. That’s discouraging to me as a coach.”
On the emotional loss of Trevor Gaskins and trying to fill that void…
“Right now, we don’t (have an answer). It’s dead silent. My voice is the only one that’s being heard, and on good teams, that can’t be the case. We’ve always talked about ownership, and the team belongs to the players. For whatever reason, we haven’t grasped that. Everybody’s kind of looking around, diverting responsibility. We need someone to step up and take ownership?that’s where we’ve got to try and get this team to do and do it quickly.”
On being down 12-0 to start the game before inserting Terrico White…
“In hindsight, you know, he still played 33 minutes. At that point, it was such an eternity, even before the half. I was hoping we could close the half a little more efficiently. Obviously, we came up empty. If we could have got it to 17 or 18, we’re in our own building, maybe we could have made a run to try and chip away. We just couldn’t do it. We couldn’t make a play. We were very inefficient offensively, even when we had chances to score. At close range, we just couldn’t make the play. We weren’t able to stop them the whole game.”
On the play of David Huertas…
“Garrett Temple is one of the better defenders in the country. They started Marcus Thornton on him. They were just really trying to be physical with him, as everybody has been. That’s been the case for the last five or six games. He’s been the guy that everybody has been keying on lately. He got out of rhythm. He was passing up open shots to take more difficult shots. He got frustrated and picked up fouls, and then we had to sit him. He’s an emotional player. For the most part, he’s been able to channel those emotions. Today, he wasn’t able to do that, which is understandable with the way we played.”