Editor’s note: Longtime Baton Rouge sportswriter, author and television host Lee Feinswog takes his unique approach to sports to dig deeper into LSU Athletics. Look for these features online and in official athletics department publications throughout the 2014-15 season.
Just catching a basketball had to be difficult, so much as shooting it.
But there was Tim Quarterman on Saturday night, bombing away with unlikely accuracy for someone who had missed 18 of his previous 22 3-point shots.
“It was just falling tonight,” he said with a laugh. “And I just kept putting it up.”
Indeed he did.
The sophomore guard from Savannah, Ga., scored a career-high 27 points, 11 in the two overtimes, when LSU somehow came away with an 87-84 victory that defied a few hoops odds, considering the Tigers trailed by as many as nine points with 2:21 left in the first OT.
“We just kept fighting,” said Quarterman, who brings a ton of enthusiasm to the court.
“Tim’s a hooper,” teammate Jordan Mickey said. “He never gives up and is going to give you everything he has every night no matter what, no matter how he’s feeling.”
For the game, Quarterman hit 6 of 10 on 3s, and another of his baskets came from just inside the line. And he grabbed five rebounds, had five assists and just as many turnovers, and three blocks and three steals. That’s a full night’s work.
“I thought last year he was our best perimeter defender,” LSU coach Johnny Jones said. “This year you’ve seen his game grow in terms of assists, taking care of the basketball and creating opportunities for others on the floor, and he’s made some big shots for us throughout the season.”
Jones chuckled.
“Tonight was exceptional for him. Some of the shots he winded up hitting we generally don’t take but he hit a couple of deep 3’s and one off balance in the far corner. Tim was excellent tonight.”
That wasn’t lost on his teammates.
“Tim was extremely good tonight,” Mickey said. “He hit some extremely big shots, ran the team when we needed him to, Tim came up very big tonight.”
Incredibly, Quarterman has been playing with a knot so big just below the first knuckle on his right hand that it hurt just to look at, so much as play college basketball. Saturday Quarterman went without the tape that had been on it, figuring it was hindering him.
“I injured it at practice in the Virgin Islands,” he said. And that was actually in late November, so that means Quarterman’s been playing with a sore hand for more than six weeks.
“It hurts but I just try not to think about it.”
And he laughed again.
There was a lot of LSU laughter after the victory, one that was truly significant because the Tigers opened SEC play by losing at Missouri, also in OT, just two days earlier.
Going 0-1 is not the end of the world, but going 0-2 makes for what could be an uphill battle all season.
“We knew it was a big game,” Mickey said. “Especially playing one of the supposedly best teams in the conference this year and it’s in our house and you never want to lose at home.”
LSU might have lost had a freshman, also from Georgia, not stepped up in a big way. Jalyn Patterson continued to be one of the nicest surprises of the season.
“That was fun,” Patterson said. “I’m glad we made it to the second overtime.”
In Patterson’s previous five games he’d hit 15 of 31 shots and made 14 assists and 11 steals. Against Georgia, with Josh Gray in foul trouble, Patterson scored a career-high 15 points to go with three assists, two steals and even a block, the second of the season for the 6-footer.
“He had so much poise out there,” Quarterman said. “He had some big-time moments and came up clutch.”
Patterson hit three 3-pointers, never turned the ball over in 27 minutes, and has quickly turned into a good college basketball player. And here’s a note: Going into the Georgia game, Patterson had taken — and made — all of two free throws this season. He hit 4 of 7 Saturday, all after halftime, including a couple early in the second overtime.
“My teammates were telling me that earlier this week, that I’d only shot two free throws,” Patterson said. And he winced when recalling one of those misses, late in regulation.
“They were talking to me when I was on the free-throw line and I was trying to concentrate,” Patterson said.
That’s the price of leaving your state and then playing the home school.
“Very special, playing against guys I played against in high school and AAU,” Quarterman said.
Both Patterson, who is from Alpharetta outside Atlanta, and Quarterman, said it was especially nice to beat the Bulldogs.
“I’ve had a lot of great moments in basketball, but this was special tonight,” Quarterman said. “I had family in the crowd tonight that came all the way from Georgia.”
LSU is now 12-3 overall and 1-1 in the league. Jones is hoping to take the high of last week — a week that included some outstanding recruiting news — onto the road at Ole Miss on Wednesday. The good news is he’s getting all that production from unexpected sources. Another sophomore, Jarell Martin, nor Mickey — yet another sophomore — scored in any of the three combined overtimes at Missouri and against Georgia. In a long SEC season, you need it from somewhere. For LSU on Saturday, it was the two kids from Georgia.
“Both of those guys really stepped up and played well and accepted the challenge,” said Jones, who, with 51 victories is now the winningest third-year coach in LSU history. “And they accept the roles, coming off the bench and both being young. They came in and were engaged against that caliber of players and they know all those guys, from AAU days.”
LSU returns home Saturday for Texas A&M and then goes on the road to Florida and Vanderbilt. SEC play is never easy, but this is a particularly tough early season stretch. Young LSU players, even those with swollen hands, appear ready.
“We’re still a young basketball team,” Jones said. “We have a lot of new guys, inexperienced in a lot of ways, but I think our growth has shown in some games in some positives that we’ve had. We just have to do more of that.”