BATON ROUGE – Anatoly Bose scored 18 of his game-high 28 points during the second half as Nicholls handed the LSU men’s basketball team a 62-53 setback Tuesday inside the Maravich Center.
Fred Hunter also added 18 points and seven rebounds for the Colonels (1-1), who ended LSU’s 82-game home winning streak to Louisiana schools dating back to the start of the streak on Dec. 8, 1988 against McNeese State. The last Louisiana team to win in the PMAC was Louisiana Tech in a 111-109 overtime decision on Dec. 6, 1988.
LSU (1-1) received 14 points apiece from Andre Stringer and Matt Derenbecker off the bench. Storm Warren tacked on eight points and hauled in a game-high 14 rebounds for the Tigers.
Nicholls took a 35-34 edge on a pair of Eldridge Moore free throws with 13:50 remaining in the second half and never relinquished the lead.
Down 51-42 with 3:14 left in second half, LSU mounted a rally ignited by a Derenbecker layup. A Stringer driving basket followed by a triple at the top of the key pulled the Tigers back to 54-50 with 54 seconds on the clock.
However, Nicholls connected for six-of-eight at the foul line down the stretch to secure the 62-53 win. The Colonels forced LSU into 18 turnovers and limited the Tigers to a 7-for-22 shooting clip during the second half.
LSU built a 19-12 advantage on a Dotson layup via a Warren steal with 5:25 to go in the first half. Stringer poured in LSU’s last six points during the final 1:36 of the opening stanza to lift the Tigers to a 25-21 edge going into the locker room.
“We want to congratulate Nicholls. Obviously they did a very, very good job getting this game to their tempo. Coach Piper had them prepared well this game as well as the last few times we’ve played them. What we had was a basketball team that forced us to play a different match-up because they’re undersized,” said LSU Coach Trent Johnson. “But again, the things we talked about, the things we worked on in the last two practices in terms of taking care of the ball, rebounding and all those kinds of things we’ve got to get corrected. Too many times we’re in situations where the ball is being thrown to the post, and we’re catching it with one hand as opposed to catching it with two. When you have 18 turnovers and you spread them around, you’re not going to beat a lot of people, but I don’t want to take anything away from Nicholls.”
LSU concludes its three-game home swing Thursday against Tennessee-Martin inside the Maravich Center. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. as the Tigers will make their television debut on CST. The game also will be broadcasted on 100.7 FM in the Baton Rouge area and on LSUsports.net/live.
LSU basketball fans can get updated information on the men’s basketball team at www.Facebook.com/lsubasketball and on twitter @LSUbasketball and @LSUCoachJohnson. LSU basketball ticket information is available at www.LSUtix.net.
HEAD COACH TRENT JOHNSON
Opening Statement…
“We want to congratulate Nicholls. Obviously they did a very, very good job getting this game to their tempo. Coach Piper had them prepared well this game as well as the last few times we’ve played them. What we had was a basketball team that forced us to play a different match-up because they’re undersized. But again, the things we talked about, the things we worked on in the last two practices in terms of taking care of the ball, rebounding and all those kinds of things we’ve got to get corrected. Too many times we’re in situations where the ball is being thrown to the post, and we’re catching it with one hand as opposed to catching it with two. When you have 18 turnovers and you spread them around, you’re not going to beat a lot of people, but I don’t want to take anything away from Nicholls. I like [Anatoly] Bose, I’ve always liked him. I told a lot of you guys he’s, to me, what college basketball is about. He’s a guy that’s not overly strong, he’s not big, he’s not physical, he’s not overly athletic, but he understands how to play this game. He understands the angles, he’s real clever, he’s real crafty and he scores the ball. We were in a position early in the half where we had the chance to get some separation. We had some turnovers, some bad shots and one thing led to another. We’ll come back out tomorrow at three, lift afterward and we’ll get ready to play Tennessee-Martin on Thursday. That’s a good thing.”
On if he worries about the team’s psyche on Thursday…
“No, I don’t worry about their psyche. Like I told them, we’ve talked about this. It’s been addressed and it’s been worked on. They, we have to make a conscious decision on what kind of team we want to have. There has to be a serious commitment to defend, rebound, take care of this ball, be very physical and very violent. Like I said, offense isn’t going to be a problem. We’re out of rhythm here, but we had every opportunity to get a stop at crucial times in the first half, in the second half. Again to answer your question, no I’m not worried about their psyche. It’s the second game of the season and if I have to worry about that in the second game then we might as well not line up and play the rest of them.”
On Malcolm’s poor performance lately…
“That’s a good question. All I can tell you is what we work on and what he looks like in practice. It’s too early to push a panic button. Like I told them, because they’re good kids and they listen. For me to go in here start berating them, scream and make an idiot out of myself, that’s not my approach. [Malcolm White] has to continue to work on trying to catch the ball with two hands, having a feel for where he’s at around the post and understand angles. We can go from there. Malcolm is a guy that’s a lot more affective when the game is really physical. He and Storm [Warren] have both been very tentative, but they have to adjust when they get a quick foul on them and a second foul. They’ve got to make that adjustment and continue to be aggressive. He’ll be fine.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On bouncing back from this loss …
“I don’t think it should be that hard. We have to bounce back because we have a game Thursday. We have one day to look at the team we play Thursday. We have to bounce back right away. It was a tough loss, and we fought to the end.”
On turnovers …
“I think we fell into the trap of them overplaying us, and we rushed our passes. I know I rushed a few passes where I could’ve been more patient and waited for my guy to get open. We didn’t backdoor cut when we were playing, but we’ll learn from it.”
On Nicholls’ defense …
“I think they ran the clock on the offensive end. They ran the clock until they found until someone had a wide-open shot. It wasn’t as up-and-down as Friday was, and that played a huge part. We also didn’t get that many fastbreak points like we did Friday.”
On getting the ball down the court …
“They rotate really well, as far as the help side and weak side. It was really hard. They were front-to-post, and we couldn’t make the pass over because they would have somebody there at the help-side. The only pass you could really make was the skip pass, but you weren’t quite sure if you could make that with a guy right there in the middle of the key. It was hard, but I think we’ll figure it out.”
On turnovers …
“Things happen in the game that have to be taken into consideration for the next game.”
On the team’s plan coming into tonight’s game …
“We just had to come out and execute every option that they were going to give to us. That was the goal, to sit back, take what they give us and execute it position by position.”
On the team’s plan coming into tonight’s game …
“Just as we had a game plan for their team, they had a game plan for us. They took a lot of things away, and our ability to execute was changed.”
On Nicholls’ performance in tonight’s game …
“I think they tried their best to slow us down. They turned the ball a lot, and when we got it back we used the plays we are normally given. They countered our plays, just as we were countering theirs.”
Nicholls State Head Coach J.P. Piper
On the win …
“I am breathless. I am just numb. I dreamed about this day for a long time, but I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. I knew coming in we had a chance. I didn’t want to seem overconfident or set myself up to be disappointed. I knew we had this in us, but I wasn’t sure we could get it on the floor. What an incredible group of young men. They really made me proud tonight. They just battled and competed and fought and fought and finally broke through there at the end as we had some good things happen for us. I just couldn’t be prouder.”
On what adjustments were made at halftime …
“I told them in the locker room at halftime that we were going to have to go through another valley in the second half. I thought we could come out with some energy and make a little run, and we did. I kept telling them ‘we are up six, we are up seven, but adversity is coming, they are coming. These guys are not going to lay down.” We just never wavered in our confidence. We kept competing, fighting and believing that if we just fought long and hard enough, something good would happen for us and we finally broke through. I had been telling them for three days that other guys besides Fred Hunter and Anatoly Bose are going to have to make plays for us, and they did. Kenny Franklin hit some big shots. Elridge Moore made free throws. So, we got a little bit from someone else and it was just enough. I thought Bose was really big down the stretch. He made some really tough buckets, and that is what your best player is supposed to do. I just couldn’t be prouder.”
On his team’s defensive effort …
“I was pleased with the defense in the post. Looking at their two post players – Storm Warren and Malcolm White – and we were able to hold them to eight points and two points, respectively. Those guys are good basketball players, and I thought we did a terrific job. It was a group effort, though. We talked about that before the game. One-on-one these guys would annihilate us, but we thought we had a good defensive game plan and a good defensive scheme. Every time the ball went into the post tonight, we had an answer. We were swarming the ball. We were walling up and we just really came up with some big defensive plays down low. We had twelve steals and we caused them to commit 18 turnovers. That gives you a chance to win if you can make some shots, and thankfully we were able to make a few shots.”
On the difference in the second half …
“In the first half I thought we let some external things bother us. We didn’t get a call that we thought we should get. A good looking shot didn’t go down. We thought we made a good play defensively, but the ball gets deflected, they get it and lay it in. we let those things bother us. The whole speech at halftime was about not letting external things affect their focus and just concentrating on making the next play. We wanted to be mentally tough and make the next play. We knew bad things would happen because it is just inevitable and part of the game. We wanted to quit dwelling on the last play and move on to the next. I thought we did a tremendous job of that in the second half. That was the difference in the game, quite frankly. No matter what happened, we didn’t change our emotional tenor. We just kept playing hard and that was the difference in the game.”