BATON ROUGE – South Carolina blitzed LSU for 10 first-half three-pointers and then held off an LSU rally for a 78-68 victory for the Gamecocks over the Tigers Tuesday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU drops its second straight conference game to fall to 12-3 (0-2), while South Carolina is now 10-5 and 1-1 in the league.
South Carolina made its first six three-point attempts and finished the first 20 minutes 10-of-13 from distance (76.9 percent). It was ironically, the same first half total from three-point range that Prairie View had against the Tigers on Dec. 22.
South Carolina scored the first 10 points of the game and the LSU offense at the same time was struggling to get on track, falling behind by as much as 28, 43-17, with 54 seconds to go in the first half. LSU trailed at the break, 50-25.
LSU began to whittle away on the lead in the second half, opening on 23-8 run to cut the margin to 10 on a Max Mackinnon three pointer that made the South Carolina lead, 58-48, with 12:05 to play. LSU got it to single digits for the first time at the 7:47 mark on another Mackinnon three-pointer, 64-55 and to just six at 66-60 with 6:22 to play.
But the Tigers never could get closer as South Carolina held the Tigers at bay to win by the final margin.
Mackinnon led LSU in scoring with 15 points, including three treys, while Pablo Tamba had 10 points and five rebounds. PJ Carter added 10 points. Robert Miller III had a good effort, scoring nine and Mike Nwoko, while struggling from the field, had a game high 13 rebounds.
LSU, after shooting 28.6 percent in the first half, shot just over 47 percent in the second to finish at 38.7 percent (24-of-62) with eight treys and 12-of-14 at the free throw line.
South Carolina finished the game shooting 47.2 percent (25-of-53) with 12 made three-pointers and 16-of-21 at the line.
LSU out rebounded South Carolina 42-30, but had its second straight game with double digit turnovers with 14.
South Carolina was led by Elijah Strong with 30 points. He hit 10-of-15 field goals, including 4-of-4 from three-point range. Meechie Johnson hit three treys in scoring 19 points and Eli Ellis had 10 points with two treys.
The Tigers are on the road on the weekend against Vanderbilt at Noon Saturday in Nashville at Memorial Gymnasium. The Tigers return to Baton Rouge for its next home game on Wednesday, Jan. 14, at 6 p.m. against Kentucky.
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LSU vs. South Carolina Men’s Basketball
January 6, 2026
LSU Head Coach Matt McMahon
Opening Statement…
“I want to give credit to South Carolina for their tremendous performance tonight. Coming off the emotional letdown of the loss at Texas A&M on Saturday, I thought we’d be amped up and ready to go tonight. In the first half, we just did not have the urgency you have to have on the defensive side of the ball; I thought they (South Carolina) were very comfortable. We were concerned about them stretching us with (South Carolina’s) Elijah Strong’s ability to shoot the three. Even though he’s only 25% on the year, he was two-for-six on Saturday against Vanderbilt. He gets off to a great start tonight, we were late on some closeouts, and he hits four threes. Then (South Carolina’s) Meechie Johnson got going from deep and we just never made them uncomfortable in the first half on our defensive side. Elijah Strong absolutely dominated the game. He came in tonight averaging ten points, he hits four threes and crushed us from behind the arc in the first half. The second half, he did his damage in the paint with his back-down, one-on-one postups. It was just a phenomenal performance by him at the five spot.”
“I thought guys like (LSU Guard) PJ Carter, (LSU Forward) Rob Miller, and (LSU Guard) Mazi Mosley came in and gave us great energy in the second half to give us a fighting chance to get back in the game. We did a much better job getting to the ball and taking away the three-point line, but we all talked about it before. It’s now the third half of our 34 halves we’ve played this year where we got annihilated from behind the three-point line in the first half. You’re not going to come back against anyone when you dig yourself that big of a deficit.”
On the defensive performance from LSU in the first half…
“I just didn’t think we were flying around. I thought they were very comfortable to do what they wanted to do. They hurt us early with a couple of the pick-and-pops with Strong; he stepped up and buried those threes. We never made them uncomfortable. They did whatever they wanted to do there in the first half and we gave them too much space with the turnover margin reflecting that. They only had six turnovers on the night with us coming off a game (at Texas A&M) where we forced a season-high 12 steals. For whatever reason, I didn’t have us ready to go with the activity and urgency that you have to play with on the defensive side of the ball.”
On the offensive performance from LSU in the first half…
“South Carolina’s physicality really bothered us. We saw that on film; we’ve played against (South Carolina Head) Coach (Lamont) Paris for a lot of years and his defenses are always physical around the basket. I thought a lot of the catches that we’ve been getting in the post and around the painted area got forced out to 12-to-15 feet. We did not finish play with the physicality and toughness required in the SEC in the painted area. You look at the numbers – we get 17 offensive rebounds, we did enough there. We didn’t turn them into enough points. Our finishing around the basket wasn’t good enough and I thought their physicality had a lot to do with it.”
LSU Forward Max Mackinnon
On the team moving forward…
“We have to bounce back. We have Vanderbilt coming up. We know that’s a good team. We have to watch film, bounce back, and learn from our mistakes.”
On why South Carolina won the game…
“They were hitting shots, and we were missing layups. That’s pretty much it. They were making shots, we were missing them, and we couldn’t get stops. They were playing better.”
LSU Forward Pablo Tamba
On why South Carolina came out so well…
“It was a mental approach to the game. We should have come out in the first half with a more aggressive mentality and defend better. We’ve struggled before when it comes to making teams miss threes, and it happened again. I think it was clearly our mental approach to the game.”
On what went wrong tonight…
“I can’t wait to go back and watch the film to see what went wrong. Being on the court, it felt like we let go, and then again for a second time in the second half. That cost us a lot. This is a big league with good teams, and great players make shots all the time, so we have to stay engaged the entire game. We can’t let past errors affect what we’re doing or the outcome of the game.”
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South Carolina Head Coach Lamont Paris
Opening Statement…
“Just real proud of the guys and their effort. Fortunately, we got off to a really good start in the game because we needed it and it was. I told, as we came out into the second half, Meechie (Johnson), I said. ‘they were definitely going to make a run, so let’s get ready. When it happens, just to calm your guys down and continue to play’, but I didn’t know they were going to make three runs, all of which were good runs, so we burned and used the timeouts that we needed to calm the waters. Just really proud that the guys then were able to regroup and make some good decisions and make a couple plays when they needed to and come out of a place that’s really hard for team to come in and win. We were fortunate to come out with a really good win.”
On his team’s nine-for-nine start…
“It is rare, you know, I didn’t even look up at the scoreboard just because I knew it was good what we were doing. I didn’t want to stop it by jinxing it, looking at the scoreboard. I thought we got some good shots, that doesn’t mean it goes in, that’s for sure, but they did. And honestly, the one we missed, the 10th one, probably the highest percentage shot of all of them, but it was really good that we got off to a good start that way and our defense fed off of that because they both worked in conjunction at that time. We were playing well offensively, moving and I thought we created some really good opportunities for one another, but that first half was our best half of defense all season. I don’t even know if one is close. Against a physical group of guys, they pound the ball inside, I thought we did a good job fighting in there. Just because those two things went together, that’s why the lead ended up being. I think either one of those starts allows you to have a lead, but the fact that both of those two things came together at the same time, offense and defense, was why early on we were able to build a big lead and obviously we needed all that down the stretch.”
On Elijah Strong’s performance…
“One, he played more minutes. I think this was the most minutes he’s ever played in one game. That was part of it, but his gifts, natural gifts, are as an offensive guy, as a scorer and can score in a variety of ways. He’s pretty versatile, even how he generates offense and he’s got a good feel for what to do and when, typically. That’s where his gifts are. We played him in a game, and he was reluctant to play in this game because he had knee issues happening, and I finally talked to him and said, ‘Just be ready for the game in case I need you’. So, I finally put him in the game, and he scored 22 points in 16 minutes. This is kind of who he is as a player. We saw a lot of that in the summer was that he’s very versatile and just has a way of getting shots without forcing shots necessarily. Just an offensive guy, but it all came together for him on the same day, which is good because we needed it.”