After a three-week hiatus, LSU was back to playing games inside its home state on Saturday night. The team earned its first Quad 1 win, 89-77, against SMU at the Smoothie King Center.
LSU turned its slow shooting around to break the slump and win this pivotal game, led by its starters.
“This was a great win and a great response for our players,” head coach Matt McMahon said. “I think they understood the urgency of the game.”
With the season still young, it was hard to determine if Max Mackinnon’s best performances were his standard. Mackinnon has been hot and cold, making over four three pointers against Tarleton State and Omaha, then turned around and made a combined 2 out of his 11 shots from deep against Boston College and Texas Tech.
Against SMU, Mackinnon went 6-for-7 from beyond the arc and an overall 8-for-9 to prove his bad games are the outlier of his senior season. His deep shots had a higher arc than in previous games, helping him find a hot hand early. He finished the game with 22 points, tying his season high.
Second-chance points were huge for LSU, as the Tigers outscored the Mustangs 19-13 in that part of the game.
Pablo Tamba stuck out as the cleanup man for the LSU offense. While LSU was finding its rhythm from behind the arc, some misses in consecutive possessions found the net because of Tamba.
“He’s a workhorse,” Sutton said about Tamba. “He’s gonna do whatever it takes to win. We all have confidence in him.”
Tamba’s off-ball positioning switching around during the game helped him pick up second chance points and tie his season high of 14 across the board. The team as a whole scored 50 of its points in the paint.
“I thought we played more to our identity of who we’ve become as a team,” McMahon said.
LSU turned up the heat as they went on a 14-2 run to give the Tigers their largest lead of the night at 39-27.
Dedan Thomas Jr. posted a career high 12 assists to go along with 16 points and earn his second double-double of the year.
He said the team was “getting back to playing with a lot of swag” and that their confidence would be the difference.
Thomas’ elite ball handling continues to stun defenders all over the court. He once assisted Tamba with a nifty pass that faked out the entire Mustang defense.
“I feel like we got back to playing with pace,” Thomas said. “Coach emphasized that this weekend during practice.”
Marquel Sutton was also a force on offense in the first half, going 5-for-9 from the field and making all six of his free throws.
“We were in a situation where we were essentially playing a lineup we haven’t practiced a lot all year,” McMahon said. “Marquel at the five and Pablo at the four and vice versa. I just thought they were phenomenal warriors.”
He continued his performance to finish out the game, earning another double-double by the end of the game with a season high 23 points and 12 rebounds.
Fouls helped Sutton, but dramatically hurt LSU on the defensive end. They committed 10 fouls in the first half and kept letting SMU get to the line, where the Mustangs went 7-of-10 from the free-throw line in the first half.
Center Michael Nwoko found himself in foul trouble again versus SMU, fouling twice just a few minutes into the game. He only played 14 minutes due to his fouling, but still managed to score eight points.
Free throws and improved shooting helped the Mustangs claw back before the second half, combined with a 1-for-7 slump down the stretch for LSU.
The stretch of points during the middle minutes of the half for LSU was just enough to hold a passive 47-44 lead at halftime.
LSU opened the door to the second half playing like a different team than the one that was taken advantage of in the last few minutes of the first 20 minutes. A 14-6 run helped LSU pull away, forcing an SMU timeout four and a half minutes into the half.
“I feel like everyone was talking,” Sutton said. “Tonight we came out with more energy, more urgency.”
The scoring run was distributed well among Tiger starters, as each of the five starters had a bucket within the first five minutes of the second half, including two more 3-pointers from Mackinnon. Head coach Matt McMahon has kept the same starting lineup for all 10 games.
“[The starters] were fantastic,” McMahon said. “I think they understand each other’s strengths and they play to those.”
They never took their foot off the gas, and a 42-point second half helped Thomas and Tamba reach season highs. The team played cohesively for about 33 minutes in the game, picking up their teammates’ slack when needed.
The Compete 4 Cause Classic saw both LSU men’s and women’s teams win and continue their elite seasons.
This win gives the men’s team a much better outlook on the rest of the schedule than could have been gathered after an underwhelming loss to Texas Tech. LSU has three non-conference games left at home to round out the month before SEC play begins in January.
