Junior forward Jaime Lloreda did not play against Alabama on Saturday. But it was not the frontcourt defense that suffered.
Alabama point guard Maurice “Mo” Williams had a field day against the LSU guards as he led the Crimson Tide (13-5, 3-4 Southeastern Conference) to a 75-66 victory over the Tigers (12-7, 1-6) Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. It was LSU’s fifth straight SEC loss.
The aforementioned Lloreda could do nothing to help his team against the Crimson Tide. The SEC suspended him for one game for elbowing Florida guard Brett Nelson in the back of the head in Tuesday’s 70-53 defeat at the hands of the Gators.
Williams scored a season high 27 points on 8-for-23 shooting from the field and 9-for-9 from the free-throw line. Senior forwards Kenny Walker and Erwin Dudley chipped in with 16 and 14 points, respectively.
“Mo Williams, I thought, stepped up and made some big plays,” said Alabama head coach Mark Gottfried. “I was really proud of Kenny Walker. I thought he played aggressive around the basket. He’s playing hard, and that is all you can ask.”
Brady continues to be baffled by his team’s perimeter defense.
“Our ones and twos can’t guard other team’s ones and twos,” LSU head coach John Brady said on his postgame show. “They drive by us to the goal. That’s where it is. We’re giving up 70 points a game in the league.”
Even though the Crimson Tide only shot 26-64 from the field for a 40.6-percent shooting clip, they were able to get to the free-throw line 26 times, sinking 19 of their attempts, and they also collected a large portion of their points on fast break lay-ups and uncontested drives.
“All that is competitiveness,” Brady said. “My teams have never done that, not competed, and if the guys we have out there aren’t going to compete, we’ll go a different direction. I’m tired of it and some of the guys on this team are tired of it.”
The first half opened on a promising note with LSU jumping out to a 5-0 lead.
The score then went to a 7-6 LSU edge with 17:16 remaining, but that would be the Tigers’ last lead of the game.
Alabama then went on an 8-0 run to jump out to a 14-7 lead and increased that lead to 30-18 with 4:01 remaining in the half.
The Tigers then went on a 10-4 run and trailed by a manageable 34-28 margin at halftime.
However, the second half became the Mo Williams show.
Williams scored 21 of his 27 points in the last 20 minutes of the game, including nine points in a row in a 1:58 span of the second half.
Before LSU could turn around, the Crimson Tide led 45-32, with 16:28 remaining.
They extended that lead to 54-36 with 10:58 remaining, and the game seemed out of reach.
But LSU finally began to hit some shots, including three consecutive 3-pointers by senior guard Torris Bright, to close the lead to 57-48 with 8:16 remaining.
But the Tigers never were able to get the lead to any smaller than eight points, as the Crimson Tide ended its three-game losing streak in front of a sellout crowd of 15,316.
Dupree led LSU with 22 points, and Lloreda’s replacement in the starting lineup, Brad Bridgewater, added 12.
The Tigers return to the court Wednesday, when they face South Carolina at 7 p.m. in the PMAC.