The LSU men’s basketball team capitalized on Vanderbilt’s poor first half of shooting to secure its third consecutive Southeastern Conference victory in a 57-56 win on Wednesday.
The Commodores (8-13, 2-7 SEC) shot 19 percent from the floor in the first 20 minutes, tallying a meager 18 points. Vanderbilt would correct its shooting woes by making more than 39 percent of its second-half shots, but the first-half rut would prove too deep for the Commodores to overcome.
LSU (13-7, 4-5 SEC) also started slowly, scoring only 15 points with less than four minutes remaining in the first half. Freshman guard Malik Morgan scored the first seven points for LSU, knocking down two early 3-pointers to carry the Tigers through their early-game shooting struggles. LSU went cold, however, and soon found itself trailing by three points.
The Tigers then came screaming out of the final media timeout to finish the first half on a 16-0 run that featured four 3-pointers and a crowd-pleasing two-handed dunk from senior center Andrew Del Piero.
“I thought we really allowed Vanderbilt to control tempo there in the first half, I think probably about the first fifteen minutes,” said LSU coach Johnny Jones. “About the last four or five minutes, we jumped up into our press and went on a nice little run. That gave us an opportunity to go into the locker room with a little bit of cushion.”
Vanderbilt opened up the second half with a 13-4 scoring run that cut the LSU lead to four. The Tigers and Commodores exchanged blows for the remainder of the second half, but sophomore forward Johnny O’Bryant III sealed the game by knocking down two free throws with eight seconds left.
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O’Bryant’s free throws came in a 10-point and five-rebound performance, which snapped his streak of five consecutive games with a double-double.
“You’ve just got to stay with it, no matter how good or bad the game is going for you,” O’Bryant said. “My teammates just told me to keep playing, and that’s what I did. When it was time to hit the free throws, I just stepped up and hit them.”
While O’Bryant posted below-average numbers in the paint, his teammates shot almost 43 percent from beyond the arc. Sophomore guard Anthony Hickey, who led the Tigers with 14 points, contributed four of LSU’s nine made 3-pointers.
The Tigers will return to action when they put their three-game conference winning streak on the line at Alabama on Saturday.
