BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team began preparations Thursday afternoon for a noon game Saturday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center against Texas A&M.
The Tigers are now looking forward after putting a 94-83 loss Wednesday night at South Carolina behind them. The Tigers, Carolina and Kentucky are all tied for the lead after 11 games in Southeastern Conference play at 8-3 with A&M and Florida tied for fourth at 7-4.
The game Saturday is a virtual sellout, as the only remaining seats are those held for LSU students who may come to the arena once it opens 90 minutes prior to tipoff and claim their seats with a valid ID on a first-come, first-serve basis. Because of the expected large turnout, students are requested to arrive early to claim their seats.
All gates and the ticket will call box office on the upper concourse will open at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The first 4,000 fans will receive a set of the 2016 LSU basketball trading cards.
Coach Johnny Jones met with the media on Thursday prior to practice and here are some of his comments:
Opening Statement…
“Coming off of what we considered … going in a tough basketball game last night against a very good and talented team, we knew it would take a great effort out there at South Carolina to win. We put forth a great effort, but we had lack of execution in certain areas—the free throw line, defensively and offensively toward the end, making sure we got the ball in the proper hands of guys who were doing a great job scoring at a high rate and at a great percentage last night. When you put all of those things together, we came up short. You can’t do that against good teams anywhere and especially a really good team that is playing as well as South Carolina right now, a team that should be a top-20, top-25 team.
“We are looking forward to another great challenge on Saturday with Texas A&M, a team that’s certainly shown throughout the year its capabilities and how tough they’ve been … in the top-20 and won a lot of really good games. They had a tough loss Wednesday at Alabama, and we know they will be prepared and ready when they get here Saturday. We have to make sure that we do a great job in the next couple of days, cleaning up a couple of areas, paying attention to detail and making sure we are taking our scouting report to the floor. If we are able to do those things, we can continue to grow and get better as a team.”
On Texas A&M’s defense against LSU in past games …
“We’ve unfortunately missed shots. At times, we’ve had some great opportunities, and shots hadn’t gone down for us. We’ve gone through areas where we had foul trouble. We’ve been able to battle through that as well. You have to give A&M credit. They’ve done a great job of making plays and making some shots down the stretch. We just haven’t been as effective in some of the opportunities that have been there for us. We just have to do a better job of making plays.”
On correcting the rough outing at the free throw line…
“You have to make sure you defend on the other end of the floor a guy (without) fouling. We wound up putting them on the line several times last night, and they were effective. They made enough free throws, 11 more than we did. It was an 11-point game at the end of the night, so we have to do a better job of defending really well and making plays. At the same time, when we are on the offensive end, we have to execute at a high level. We are a high percentage team. We are leading the league in field goal percentage, and we just have to make sure that we don’t take any plays for granted and take chances. We have to take our best available shot. It should be coming from our best available people early in the clock. When we do that, we have a chance to be really, really good. Free throw-wise, we just have to step up there and make them. We’ve shown the capability of doing that. Unfortunately, last night on the road, if we had made them, we could have possibly gone in at halftime with the lead and momentum. Even there in the second half, if we had made them, it would have been a closer game … Our focus is to keep working on them in practice, and hopefully, we can execute them in the game more often than not.”
On the fouls by LSU…
“That’s tough. Getting a foul and the other conventional three-point plays hurt. A lot of time it was right there when we were in striking distance. They’d come in and take a tough shot, we would foul them and shots would go in, and they would hit the free throw. That’s another three points. Those things are hard to continue to overcome. That’s like someone coming down and dropping three or four three-pointers on you from behind the line. Again, we didn’t do a great job. We have to do a better job of moving the feet, putting ourselves in great position and limiting guys to one shot. A few times last night, we gave up some driving angles to guys and then tried to contest shots late. Therefore, we did not do a good enough job on the front end of defending it. We’ve shown that we are very capable. We just have to be willing to do it and gut it out throughout the process. We are a better defensive team than we showed last night. They may have scored 15 out of their last 17 possessions last night, and we only got two stops. That’s just not good enough against a team like that.”
On LSU’s offense…
“… I just think anytime you have guys scoring like that, we scored 83 points last night, and that’s a lot of points. We just have to be better on the defensive end of the floor. Keith Hornsby had it going last night, shot well. Antonio Blakeney had it going, and Ben Simmons was really good, be it, scoring, touching it in the paint and making extra plays and passes. When other guys aren’t shooting it as well, they have to be able to bring something else to the table, which is what they are capable of doing. We can’t be one-dimensional. Defensively, I was more concerned about our efforts and getting stops. If we score 80-something points, we should win the basketball game because that means we’ve done what we were supposed to do on the defensive end of the floor.”
On the point guard play…
“For point guards and being one, I think what you ask for is being able to manage the game. That’s the most important thing you have to do out there. You’re the quarterback. You have to manage the game. You have to know who’s got a hot hand or what we need to do to execute and where we need to really make sure that we are grinding a play out or when we need to score if a team has made a run. You have to make sure that those guys are capable of doing that. We feel like Josh Gray and Tim Quarterman are very capable. It’s just that we have to make sure that we do that each night out, every possession. That’s when it’s important. We have to understand how important each possession is at this level …”
On remaining tied for first place in the SEC…
“It’s a credit to these guys to be in the position where you could have a setback this late in the season and still remain in first place. They were obviously playing well throughout the season, especially in conference play. We’ve positioned ourselves pretty well. We just have to make sure that we take advantage of the chance opportunities that we are presented with.”
On the 12 p.m. start Saturday…
“… I think they’ll be ready. We have another opponent out there on the floor. One of the main things to look forward to is playing the game and the challenge. Our fans have been outstanding. They have an opportunity to come out in front of a great crowd, which is always exciting for our guys to have an opportunity to perform at a high level. Times really don’t matter. A lot of times you like to get it in, get it over and watch everyone else at the end of the day and see who will fall by the wayside.”