AUBURN, Ala. – Trent Johnson is known in coaching circles for his calm approach and stoic demeanor on the sidelines.
On very few occasions does LSU’s men’s basketball coach lose his cool. But halftime Saturday against Auburn was one of those times.
No. 12 LSU was down 6 points going into the locker room when Doug Sirmons called a technical foul on LSU’s bench after time expired. Two Auburn free throws before the start of the second half gave the host Tigers an 8-point lead, and Auburn never looked back en route to a 69-53 senior day victory.
“What happened before the half was – I looked at him,” Johnson said after the loss. “Looked at him. I’ve got three [technical fouls] – two for looking at somebody.”
The technical foul was the culmination of a difficult first half for LSU. Auburn, which entered the game winning seven of its past eight games, hung tough with LSU in the first 20 minutes, similar to the teams’ earlier matchup Feb. 21 which LSU won, 79-72.
The first half saw four ties before Auburn opened the game up with a 10-2 run capped by a Quantez Robertson layup that gave the home team a 29-21 lead with 3:22 left in the half.
LSU fought back and closed the lead to 4 points with 20 seconds left in the half. But a layup by junior guard DeWayne Reed as time expired and the technical foul pushed to lead back to three possessions.
A Chris Johnson dunk cut Auburn’s lead to 40-32 a couple minutes into the second half, but Auburn quickly mounted an 8-0 run, and the closest LSU got the rest of the game was 11 points.
The margin of victory, Auburn’s largest in home Southeastern Conference play this season, prompted fans in Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum to chant “overrated” toward the visitors in the final minutes of the game.
“We weren’t too much worried about that,” said LSU senior guard Marcus Thornton, who finished with 23 points and was the only LSU player in double figures. “They can say what they want to, but we won the SEC. The players in our locker room, they fought hard for this season. I wasn’t too much worried about [the chanting].”
Auburn matched LSU’s physicality throughout the afternoon, out-rebounding the Southeastern Conference champions 45-37 and holding LSU junior forward Tasmin Mitchell to a season-low 5 points, thanks in large part to Auburn senior forward Korvotney Barber.
“We made a bit of a change to put our bigger guy on [Mitchell] for this game, and that certainly was a factor,” said Auburn coach Jeff Lebo.
Barber – Auburn’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer – kept Mitchell from getting into a rhythm all game long and finished with 16 points and 17 rebounds of his own.
“Barber’s strong. He’s good,” Johnson said. “He’s doing that against everybody. He’s a good player.”
Auburn, which has the SEC’s top scoring defense, has been doing “that” against league competition in recent weeks, although most of it has been under the radar.
Its 10 conference wins are the most since the team won the conference in 1999 and the most in coach Jeff Lebo’s five-year tenure. But despite the accomplishments, little has been said about Auburn on the national scene, something Johnson thinks is a slap in the face of division and conference as a whole.
“We’ve had a lot of respect for Auburn all year long,” Johnson said. “I don’t think there’s anybody in our league – maybe not anybody in the country – that’s played as good of basketball as they have in the last 45 days to two months.”NOTES: Saturday’s game was the sixth in a row that LSU has allowed more than 69 points. The Tigers entered the game giving up only 65.6 points per game … Senior guard Terry Martin was 0-for-7 with no points and five turnovers against Auburn this season … Senior forward Quintin Thornton’s 7 rebounds were his most since an 8-rebound performance against Southeastern Louisiana on Jan. 3 … Every Auburn first-half field goal came from inside the paint, and the team finished 2-of-16 from the 3-point line … LSU shot 32 percent from the field on the afternoon and missed 9 of its 24 free throw attempts——Contact the Daily Reveille’s sports staff at [email protected]