It took the LSU men’s basketball team 22 minutes to score 40 points in Wednesday night’s game against Mississippi State. Thanks to senior guard Marcus Thornton, the Tigers reached 60 in just five.Thornton scored 17 points in less than four minutes, fueled by 4-of-4 shooting from 3-point range to turn a close 38-35 contest against the Bulldogs (13-6, 3-1) into an 81-57 blowout for the Tigers (15-3, 3-1).”As a player, if you hit one or two, you get in a groove,” Thornton said. “Shots just started falling, and they kept feeding me, so I kept shooting.”Thornton’s 31 points led all scorers on the night and opened the door to a 24-7 run in which three different Tigers shot 100 percent from the field.”I’ve known Marcus my whole life, and he can shoot lights out,” said sophomore point guard Bo Spencer. “Basically that’s it … I’ve been with him when we play pickup, and he won’t miss the whole game.”The win gives the Tigers an early lead in the Southeastern  Conference Western Division for the first time in several years. The last time LSU had a winning record after four conference games was 2006, the year the Tigers ran to the Final Four.”I don’t want to talk too soon, but we did have two pretty big wins,” said junior forward Tasmin Mitchell. “I don’t want to count my eggs before they hatch, but we’ve just been executing and playing good defense.”Thornton wasn’t the only one shooting well against the Bulldogs’ sixth-ranked defense. Mitchell provided the Tigers’ early offense, finishing the first half with 16 points.Spencer had a hot hand of his own, scoring 9 points, all of which came on a 3-of-4 performance from the 3-point line.”Bo was really good,” said LSU coach Trent Johnson. “Defensively he set the tone. There was a period there in the second half where they were making a run at us, and he got out in front of them on the perimeter, and everyone else followed suit.”As lopsided as the second half turned out to be, LSU could not put the Bulldogs away in the game’s early going.A resounding block by senior center Chris Johnson sparked an early 7-0 LSU run, giving the Tigers their first double-digit lead of the game. The Tigers were able to push the lead to as many as 13, but the Bulldogs whittled that down to a 36-30 halftime deficit with timely 3-point shooting.”We looked like we were trying to move in mud offensively in the first half,” Johnson said. “In the second half Marcus stayed within the framework of what we were running. We ran a lot of series of sets for him, and he came out and hit some deep 3’s.”A frenzied crowd came to the PMAC to cheer on LSU for the second time in a week. The Tigers drew a paid attendance of 11,709, the second consecutive home game to draw more than 11,000 fans.”Playing in front of a large crowd with all the noise, and seeing the fans happy and hearing them cheer you on makes everyone want to play more,” Spencer said. “When you get a defensive stop, and you keep sticking it to them, it’s a big momentum boost to have the crowd out there.”——Contact David Helman at [email protected]