BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers broke open a close game with a 15-3 run in the first six minutes of the second half and went on to score 51 second half points to take care of Southeastern Louisiana, 90-61, Saturday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers won for the 15th consecutive time in the building dating back to the final three games of the 2007-08 season, the fifth longest winning streak in the 38-years of the PMAC. LSU also completed with its seventh win of the season at home over a Louisiana school its 74th consecutive win at home over a Louisiana school dating back to the start of the streak over 20 years ago on Dec. 8, 1988.
But unlike the last two Louisiana contests against McNeese and Louisiana-Lafayette this one did not go down to the wire after LSU moved out in the first part of the second 20 minutes.
The Tigers used the scoring of Tasmin Mitchell, Marcus Thornton and Bo Spencer to put this game away and the defensive presence of resident stopper Garrett Temple who held leading scorer Kevyn Green to just three points before leaving the game in the final minutes. Green finished with six points in 28 minutes.
Mitchell hit for 24 points, while Thornton was the leading scorer for LSU, getting his fifth 30-plus point game with a season high 33 points with three assists and two steals. Spencer had 17 points. LSU had just five turnovers in the contest while forcing 18 for the Lions.
Patrick Sullivan led Southeastern (6-7) with 17 points, while Warrell Span had 12. Brandon Fortenberry added 10.
LSU is now 12-1 on the year.
“I thought we were pretty good in all phases,” said LSU Coach Trent Johnson. Offensively, to start the game we got some quick shots that were good shots that didn’t go down for us, but we kept our poise and really defended. I thought for the most part they were really disappointed in their defensive performance and execution against Louisiana-Lafayette, so there was a concentrated effort. We beat a good team. It feels good and they feel good.”
LSU lead 39-31 at the intermission, but Southeastern got the first four points to cut it to 39-35 at the 18:40 mark. From there the Tigers used a 15-3 run, powered primarily by Mitchell and Thornton to up the game to 54-38 at the 14:49 mark. From there the Tigers slowly expanded the lead, getting to 20, 67-47, at the 9:09 mark on a Mitchell jumper and as much as 30 on three occasions in the final three minutes.
LSU now travels Monday morning to Salt Lake City to take on the University of Utah on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. CST. The Tigers open Southeastern Conference play on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 12:30 p.m. at Alabama.
“Hopefully we can take this as momentum and move forward because we are facing a different type of team right now. I was an assistant coach at the University of Utah for three years,” Johnson said. “It is a very educated fan base there and an institution that really understands basketball. They are big, strong and physical.”
LSU HEAD COACH TRENT JOHNSON QUOTES
Opening statement …
“I thought we were pretty good in all phases. Offensively, to start the game we got some quick shots that were good shots that didn’t go down for us, but we kept our poise and really defended. I thought for the most part they were really disappointed in their defensive performance and execution against UL-Lafayette, so there was a concentrated effort. I thought Garrett Temple was exceptional. Considering (Kevyn Green only scored three points off of him and he scored six for the game. There was a three pointer on a deep three hedge on Delwan Graham, but for him not to get touches as much as they tried to go for him, that’s a big response to what Garrett did defensively. I thought Quintin (Thornton) was very good. Sullivan caused some problems for us in the first half and Quintin took away the right shoulder, left hand hook in the second quarter. We beat a good team. It feels good and they feel good.
“Offensively and defensively I thought we were pretty good in all phases and hopefully we can take this as momentum and move forward because we are facing a different type of team right now. I was an assistant coach at the University of Utah for three years. It is a very educated fan base there and an institution that really understands basketball. They are big, strong and physical coming off a 20 point win versus Wyoming. They beat Gonzaga about a week ago. It’s going to be a different type of game, but it’s the point in time in the year where we need to be ready to play every game. Terry Martin will be with us. He will have an opportunity to play, providing practice goes well, but his suspension is up. I’m happy for them and I thought we played well tonight.”
On if the altitude will affect the team in Utah …
“How about this, I was in Nevada for five years and Tulsa came in my first two years and beat us. They weren’t worried about altitude. We will come out tomorrow at 6 p.m. and we are going to walk through and watch video and get on a plane at 7 a.m. When we get there, we are practicing from 6 to 8 a.m., and then we have the opportunity to play a very good basketball team. We have 11 guys in uniform now, so if they get tired quickly, I can put someone else in.”
On having a road game before the first SEC road game …
“It just worked out that way with the schedule. Whether road or home, I didn’t want to take this team out on the road during school. That was the most important thing and that’s the only time it could have fallen into our schedule. Now, would I have liked to have played them earlier in (Baton Rouge) during Christmas? Yes, but they will come back here next year.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
Opening Statement…
“Southeastern is a pretty good team. They played some good games earlier this season against competition. They played Minnesota, Arkansas, at Auburn. Today. They were in those games. We knew today was going to be a challenge, and we wanted to put them away in the second half. Step on their necks, and we did after that four minute timeout.”
On next game against Utah…
“I didn’t play in our last game against Utah because it was my redshirt season, and Andrew Bogut was playing with them. It’s a tough place to play because of the atmosphere and because it’s hard to breathe up there in the mountains, so we’re going to go up there early. They beat a top-10 Gonzaga team. They are very educated. It’s going to be a good game.”
Opening statement…
“Southeastern is a great team. We wanted to come out with that intensity that we have shown all year. We didn’t want to let up today. We wanted to go out there and play our game. That’s what we did.”
On what woke team up more: Southeastern’s slam dunk with 16 minutes or Coach Johnson…
“A dunk is a dunk, but Coach Johnson woke us up. He called a timeout and told us to get settled and poised and to just play the game we know how to play.”
Opening statement…
“We were aggressive. Coach (Johnson) told us from the beginning that we were going to come out and be aggressive and be intense. We came out with great intensity. We did what Coach asked us to do. We lacked in some places, but we did everything coach told us to.”
On getting team involved when Southeastern started to make a comeback…
“Southeastern started off pretty good. They gave us a good run for our money. We had to pick it up on the defensive end. We had to apply some pressure on point guard, and we had to start kicking it on offense.”
Opening statement…
“Coming into this game we watched Southeastern’s film against Minnesota. They played a good game with them. In our last game, we didn’t come play as hard as we should have. Coach (Johnson) put in our head to come out harder than we did in that last game. When Coach saw that Southeastern was getting hyper on our court, he was getting frustrated. Coach gave it to us again to come out hard and take our home court, and we did.”
On season-high performance…
“I was just feeding off of our defensive end. That really opened us up on offense. If we do a good job on defense, the offense will come.”