Though the No. 23 LSU men’s basketball led South Alabama by as many as 19 points and won Thursday night’s contest by 12, the final score didn’t reveal the struggle to overcome a gritty Jaguar team.
But even South Alabama coach Matthew Graves realizes his team needed to play it’s best basketball to beat this year’s Tigers (3-0).
“Ultimately, your margin for error is very small against a team like this,” Grave said. “That eight minutes to end the first half really hurt us.”
With freshman forward Ben Simmons notching his second career double-double with a game-high 23 points and 16 rebounds, LSU held on to a 12-point halftime lead to win by the same margin, 78-66, at the PMAC.
The victory, the second of two regional games in the Legends Classic, paves the way for LSU’s trip to New York for the semifinals of the tournament, beginning Monday night against Marquette at 6:00 p.m.
Against a quick, guard-oriented roster, Simmons said South Alabama presented a needed challenge before a marquee opponent.
“It’s good, especially because we have Marquette coming up,” Simmons said. “I felt like [South Alabama] was a better team than we’ve played the last two games, so it helped a lot. We know what we need to work on, and we are going to get to it.”
Simmons carried the aggressive streak he played with against Kennesaw State on Monday night into the opening tip tonight, going into double figures by the 11:52 mark of the first half. Even with six straight points from Simmons, the Tigers battled moments of sloppiness, allowing the Jaguars to cut the lead to four points through the first 10 minutes.
LSU, though, responded quickly, extending the lead to 12 points heading into the break. For the second straight game, Josh Gray provided a spark off the bench, scoring seven first-half points.
But foul trouble caught up with Simmons very early in the second half, recording three infractions within the first three minutes of the period. LSU coach Johnny Jones kept him in the game, allowing the Tigers to stretch a 10-point lead to 16 with a dunk from Simmons before Jones went to his bench.
“I think I just wasn’t as focused and wasn’t concentrating when I got that second foul,” Simmons said. “I didn’t feel like it was a foul at first, but then I looked up [at the jumbotron] and clearly it was. Maybe, it was a little bit of fatigue.”
With Simmons on the bench, Blakeney showed his outside range, knocking down back-to-back three pointers for the Tigers’ largest lead of the game.
“I just saw opportunities and open shots, so I had to try and knock them down,” Blakeney said.
After the Blakeney treys to stretch the Tigers lead to 19 with 14:43, South Alabama rumbled back to score nine-unanswered points. During the run, sophomore center Elbert Robinson III went down with an ankle injury, leaving the game at the 11:15 mark.
Following the game, Jones said Robinson saw a team doctor and was placed in a boot, hoping to reevaluate him on Saturday
Despite the South Alabama run, Simmons had another answer, scoring six straight points, including two dunks before a Jaguar timeout.
The rookie Australian picked up his fourth foul with a little less than seven minutes to go, but it didn’t matter much as the Tigers never let South Alabama cut its deficit to single digits.
“Through it all – their runs, foul trouble and everything else – I thought our guys did a great job of responding to their runs at the end of the day,” Jones said. “That was something that was certainly encouraging for us.”