BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team equaled its longest winning streak since December 2011 when it came back strongly from an 8-1 deficit that saw the Tigers miss their first nine field goal attempts and win going away Monday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, 87-67, over Southern Mississippi.
The win puts LSU at 10-2 on the season and undefeated since the team returned prior to Thanksgiving from the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Tigers will play their final non-conference game on Saturday night at 6 p.m. at home against Savannah State.
The Tigers were so close to putting what may have been a school record first of three players with double doubles as Jordan Mickey posted his seventh of the season and 16th for his career with 14 points and 10 rebounds, while Tim Quarterman had his first at 12 points and 14 rebounds to go with six assists. Jarell Martin led the Tigers in scoring with 24 points and just missed a double up with nine boards.
Mickey also had six blocks on the evening and the league leader in block average has had 19 blocks in the last three games.
LSU junior Josh Gray returned to the starting lineup for the Tigers after missing the two games prior to Christmas with a sprained ankle suffered in the Sam Houston State game on Dec. 13. Gray played 27 minutes and had six points, four assists and two turnovers. Quarterman off the bench again played over 30 minutes (33) for the 11th straight game of the season.
The Tigers had over 50 points in the paint for the third time this season (54) and 24 points off 15 USM turnovers.
Southern Miss (5-6), losers for the third straight game, got 28 points from Chip Armelin of Sulphur, to lead the Golden Eagles. Matt Bingaya added 13 points and Davon Hayes 11.
LSU nearly shot 50 percent for the game from the field despite the 0-for-9 shooting in the opening four minutes. LSU posted 17-of-33 for 51.5 percent in the second half and 35-of-71 for the game (49.3%). LSU was 6-of-19 from the arc (31.6%). Southern Miss shot 23-of-57 overall 40.4 percent and 9-of-25 from the arc (36%).
When Southern Miss scored on a three by Hayes to open the game at the 19:19 mark, it quickly drew a 30-second timeout from Coach Johnny Jones. LSU could not make a shot and Southern Miss opened an 8-1 lead with 16:01 to play and it was a Keith Hornsby bucket at the 15:09 mark that broke the ice and brought LSU back to 8-6 down to USM.
Hornsby would finish with 10 points as would Jalyn Patterson.
LSU would tie the game at 15, 17 and 19, the latter at the 10:09 mark and LSU would take the lead, 21-19 on a Quarterman layup. The Tigers would outscore the Golden Eagles, 30-14, over the final 10 minutes of the half to lead, 49-33, at intermission.
LSU’s biggest lead of the game would come with 11:09 to play as the Tigers led by 23 points for the first of four times at, 65-42.
The Tigers had another good assist-to-turnover ratio with 22 assists for 35 baskets made
LSU is 7-0 on the season in the Maravich Center and in his three years at LSU Coach Johnny Jones is 21-1 in non-conference contests.
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LSU HEAD COACH JOHNNY JONES
Opening statement …
“We knew coming into the game that Southern Miss would be a challenge. We knew that they would play extremely hard and that we would get a great effort from them. True to form, I thought they did a great job of getting off to a really good start. Being off for X-amount of days, coming back in to get a few practices in, and being the first game back from the break, I thought they were able to settle in and really start executing on one end of the floor, adjusting and getting stops. This gave us an opportunity to go in with momentum on our side in the first half. In the second half, we came back out and they made a nice little run. We settled in again, and kept them at bay. I’m really proud of the team to be able to fight through those types of stretches for that period of time and come back with a win after the break. So, I’m really pleased with the effort.”
On tonight’s performance …
“We moved the ball well. What our post guys were able to do, they weren’t trying to force the action. They were poised under pressure, which is really important. We were able to hit cutters going under the basket. Defensively, I thought they did an excellent job coming in with a really good gameplan to try to take our post-block players away from us to allow us to take jumpers. We started off with jumpers, but once we settled in, understood making extra passes and getting the ball from one side of the floor to the other, then we were more crisp. We made the right plays, (there were) less turnovers, and we were getting easy baskets.”
On Tim Quarterman‘s and Josh Gray‘s performance tonight…
“… Tim [Quarterman] played excellent tonight. He winded up with a double-double tonight: 12 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists. That’s a tremendous line, I don’t care how many minutes you are playing or what position you are playing. For him to have that stat line says how he competes. I thought the two games without Josh [Gray], he had to maximize his minutes mostly at the point guard position. I thought tonight, when he was able to move around a little bit, he was much more effective for us.”
On Tim Quarterman‘s improvement from last year…
“I thought last year, as a freshman, you have the opportunity to go through a program, you learn philosophy, and you understand what you were asked to do. You get bigger, stronger and he is more familiar with what we are doing. With the way he has implemented the way that he needed to, he has improved. He knows he will be at the one, two, and three positions and knows that he will be on the floor, so it isn’t a concern whether he is going to be playing or not. Last year, Tim was the best perimeter defender we had on the team. This year, he is the best on ball defender. We utilized him a lot that way last year. This year, he has been a lot more effective offensively. He’s been making plays, knocking down shots, and you can’t leave him open. He’s been a creator for making opportunities for other players on the floor. “
On the slow start with getting used to Josh Gray back…
“I wish I could blame it on that. I think the layoff caused that a little bit. I thought we took early shots. We had a size advantage. We should have been playing inside out. We should have been playing paint touches, and we didn’t. Once we moved the ball to the block, which forced their defense to switch. Then, that got the easy looks that we needed. It was just needing to make an adjustment and settling our guys in and playing, and not trying to make a 20 point play, but make one or two plays to try to get us up 20.
On the team making adjustments…
“I think they have done an excellent job of responding and coming out, making adjustments as well. One of the things is when you are able to give them instructions and they go out and carry it out on the floor, it is going to be really good for us.”
On what they want to improve on before beginning SEC play…
“We want to make sure we continue to get into our bench and try to lessen some of the minutes that some of the starters are playing. That is going to help us. I think the other thing is just defensively we would like to be crisp on our switching. Also we want to work on our communicating and not getting confused. We got confused early tonight with our switches because we didn’t communicate like we needed to. But we were able to clean those things up and be a better basketball team. Offensively, we have shown some signs that we can be very crisp. We had some big turnovers tonight. I think Jordan [Mickey] had about five turnovers. That was uncharacteristic of him tonight. And if we can do a better job of that, it well help us.”
LSU GUARD TIM QUARTERMAN
On his role as the 6th man or being a starter…
“Coming back from Christmas break and being focused was big for us tonight. It doesn’t matter what role I play, I am happy to have Josh back in the line-up and helping out the team. I think I gave my team another big lift by coming off the bench tonight. “
On the reason for coach calling a timeout 8 seconds into the game…
“He just wanted to tell us to play around the rim and try to get our bigger players more involved. They had a short line-up and coach wanted us to work the ball inside and out.”
On how the team never succumbed to panic…
“We just try to stay confident. There was plenty of basketball left to play. Our team did a good job of moving the ball around and creating open shots.”
LSU FORWARD JORDAN MICKEY
On Tonight’s Game
“(Coach Jones) said they were a small team, we have to go inside …. We have to take advantage of that. We know we are capable of doing it (making shots). It was good for us to see some fall for us (after 0-9 start).”
Josh Healthy…Tim off the bench
“Having Josh back for us is big for us. He’s primarily a warrior for us. He likes to get up and down the floor and just Tim bringing the edge off the bench like he does for us every game is important. When (Tim) started he did extremely well for us. Tim has learned a few things. He worked on some things over the summer. He watched lots of film over the summer. He’s improved his game over the summer and I’m happy for him.”
SOUTHERN MISS COACH DOC SADLER
On his over all thoughts on the game…
“I thought that we played fine for the most part on offense. On defense we could have done things differently … But Johnny’s team proved to be better tonight. They were definitely better offensively, and defensively we maybe got in a little better position toward later in the game. We also are giving young guys more confidence and that will be important to us. We probably could have used some other things but for the most part aside from the final score I’m not happy with the loss and you know I thought we tried really hard tonight. “
On the having the lead and then losing it quickly…
“Well I think we got tired and I think that is what happens, you get tired and you shoot quick and when you shoot quick you don’t get back in time to defend some baskets. And as I told our coaches at half time, worst things have happened to us and we did make some shots early and we thought things were going to be easier which I knew they were not going to be. We have to get the ball moving from side to side and I thought we did that in the second half. In fact, I thought the last five minutes of the first half we did a great job. “
On the offense has a whole …
“… Everything that we got tonight was just not at the basket and that makes it hard but at the same time we get 67 points against a team that may be the second best team in the SEC. LSU has a great basketball team and I know the score may not look like (that) and I know our players are very disappointed so we have to take time to get built back up and get their heads back up in the air and get ready for the start of conference play on Saturday.”