BATON ROUGE – The LSU Tigers, ranked 19/23 in the national polls, will go to Brooklyn undefeated at 3-0 after a 78-66 win over South Alabama in LSU’s second Legends Classic game at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center Thursday night.
The Tigers now head to Brooklyn Sunday for a 7 p.m. game ET on Monday against Marquette at the Barclays Center in the first semifinal of the championship round. NC State and Arizona State play later in the evening and LSU will play one of those two teams on Tuesday.
Ben Simmons had 23 points and 16 rebounds, while fellow freshman Antonio Blakeney scored 22 points to lead LSU while Josh Gray had 11 points and Elbert Robinson III 10 points. Robinson left the game near the point of the second half with what may have been an ankle injury whose severity will be determined as the weekend progresses.
Simmons, according to ESPN tweets after the game, the Melbourne freshman is the first SEC freshman to have 20 points and 15 rebounds in a game since Julius Randle of Kentucky in the 2013-14 season.
Winning for the 16th-straight time under Coach Johnny Jones when shooting 50 percent from the field, LSU built a 12-point halftime advantage and maintained a double-digit lead throughout the second half.
Simmons was 9-of-14 from the field, while Blakeney was 7-of-11 shooting with four three pointers. LSU shot 29-of-57 for the game, highlighted by a 14-of-25 second half. LSU had another good night at the free throw line at 73.7 percent.
South Alabama (1-2) had four players in double figures with Nick Stover 13, Georgi Boyanov 12 and Ken Williams and Don MuepoKelly 10 (and 10 rebounds). USA shot 40 percent from the floor (26-65) and just 7-of-15 at the free throw line.
Tim Quarterman had five assists to lead LSU’s 15 assists, while Simmons and Brandon Sampson had three assists each.
The teams traded the lead for the first three minutes with South Alabama’s last lead at 7-6 with 17:04 to play.
From there, Sampson hit a three off a Josh Gray pass, Simmons hit two free throws and Robinson had a dunk and a short jumper to push the lead to 15-7 in less than two minutes. The lead head at the six or eight point area for several minutes until the Jaguars closed it to four, 23-19, with 9:57 to go.
Gray hit back-to-back layups and then Robinson did the same and the lead reached double digits for the first time in the game at 29-19. LSU finished the half with its biggest lead of the first 20 minutes at 40-28.
LSU never let South Alabama get the game back into single digits in the second half, using back to back three-pointers by Blakeney that gave LSU its biggest advantage at 19-points, 55-36, with 14:43 to play.
LSU had a 44-30 advantage in the paint, but the other specialty stats were fairly even with both teams having 13 turnovers and USA a 22-19 points off TOs advantage. Each team had 13 second chance points as LSU was outrebounded by 2, 39-37.