br>    Days after an embarrassing 102-70 loss to Florida on Jan. 16, the LSU basketball team proved that its initial Southeastern Conference victory against Arkansas was not a fluke as the Tigers of LSU (12-5, 2-2 SEC) defeated the Tigers of Auburn on Saturday in the PMAC for their best conference start since head coach John Brady’s arrival to the program in 1997.
The Tigers, fresh off their eleventh consecutive home victory, return to action tonight as they begin a two-game Mississippi road trip against Ole Miss (14-4, 3-2 SEC) at the Smith Coliseum in Oxford, Miss.
LSU will follow up the game against the Rebels when they meet up with Mississippi State on Saturday.
Tip-off for tonight’s game is set for 7 p.m. and the game can be heard on 98.1 FM.
“[Ole Miss head coach] Rod Barnes is a good coach, and I have a lot of respect for him,” Brady said. “He can get his team to play hard every night. They defend and rebound, even though sometimes they don’t shoot it well. He knows how to get guys to rally and play for him.”
It has been two long months and 12 games since the Tigers have won a game away from the friendly confines of the Deaf Dome.
The last road victory came against Mercer on Nov. 25 at the Big Island Invitational in Hilo, Hawaii.
Since then, LSU has dropped games to New Orleans, Miami, Alabama and Florida before playing Ole Miss tonight and Mississippi State on Saturday.
“Any road game in the SEC, no matter what their record is, is going to be a tough game,” LSU guard Collis Temple III said. “Ole Miss plays great defense and Kentucky went into Mississippi State and lost, so both of these games are very key for how we play on the road in the future in the SEC.”
On defense, the Tigers will be aware of Ole Miss’s leading scorer, a 6-foot-8 power forward Justin Reed, who will be looking to bang away at Ronald Dupree while guards Jason Harrison and Aaron Harper sit behind the three-point line waiting for shots.
LSU’s defense held Auburn to 58 points on 32 percent shooting on Saturday while the LSU offense scored 75 points on 46 percent shooting, led by forward Ronald Dupree’s 25 points.
Brady said he attributes much of the success on defense to a change in schemes that was presented to the players the day before the game.
“We doubled the post like we normally do, but we doubled high-ball screens,” Brady said. “We threw something different at Auburn that we haven’t done until this point of the season.”
The 2-2 mark in the SEC is the best start the Tigers have had under Brady in five seasons, including the 1999-2000 SEC West champion team that finished 12-4 in the conference.
That team opened the SEC with a 1-3 record and eventually went on to advance to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament.
“That’s a compliment for us,” Brady said. “I told the team that. It’s not like we’ve played bad teams. The first four teams have been pretty good.”
Point guard Torris Bright echoed his coach’s statements and said that the team has been improving.
“I think we’re getting better and better as the SEC season goes on,” Bright said. “We learned a lot from the Florida loss. We’re learning to play with each other and are being more aware of the score and the shot clock.”
Ronald Dupree, LSU’s leading scorer, said he is convinced the win against Auburn will give LSU the momentum to play well tonight against the Rebels.
“With [the Auburn] win, it gives us more and more confidence to go in and execute,” he said. “We need to do the types of things on the road that we do at home and we’ll see what happens.”
Injuries
Temple III, the team’s second leading scorer who played 28 minutes against Auburn despite a hip pointer and partially torn tendon in his foot, will miss tonight’s game and possibly Saturday’s game against Mississippi State as well.
Freshman Antonio Hudson, averaging 9.5 points off the bench, will replace Temple III in the starting lineup.