Five minutes in, it appeared LSU would follow the same script.
A night removed from a scintillating 11-for-22 display from beyond the 3-point line against Alabama, the Tigers (19-13, 10-10 Southeastern Conference) knocked down four of their first five 3-pointers against Kentucky, racing out to an early 16-10 lead.
Then the Wildcats, maligned through a roller-coaster season, flexed their muscle.
Kentucky eviscerated LSU on the glass to the tune of a 48-32 rebounding advantage and 21 second-chance points while guard James Young chipped in 21 points to eliminate the Tigers from the Southeastern Conference Tournament, 85-67.
“We didn’t do a good job of boxing out,” said LSU junior forward Johnny O’Bryant III. “We let [Kentucky freshman Julius] Randle get his own rebounds. We let them get easy points early and that kind of hurt us.”
O’Bryant led the Tigers with 18 points, but shot an abysmal 6-for-13 from the free throw line and was marred with foul trouble through most of the second half.
Freshman forward Jordan Mickey added 12 points and a team-high 13 rebounds.
Young was one of four Wildcats in double figures. The Tigers contained SEC Freshman of the Year Julius Randle inside for a third straight meeting, but he found his way to the foul line 16 times, knocking down nine of them to chip in 17 points and grab a game-high 16 rebounds.
Kentucky coach John Calipari created a hullabaloo after the regular season, telling the Lexington media he implemented a mysterious “tweak” in the Wildcat offense.
Whatever the tweak was, it shone through as the Wildcats used 11 blocks — six from sophomore center Willie Cauley-Stein — to translate into offense, shooting 47 percent in both halves for perhaps Kentucky’s most complete performance of the season.
“Some of this stuff, we should have done before and that’s on me as a coach,” Calipari said. “I think you saw a little different team today with what we had been working on.”
After the Tigers pushed their first half lead to eight with 12:59 to go, Kentucky rattled off a 28-10 run to close the half, exploiting LSU’s tentativeness inside by scoring 18 second chance points and 18 in the paint.
Up 42-32 at halftime, Kentucky raced out of the locker room, increasing its lead to 16 after a thunderous slam from Cauley-Stein.
The Tigers cut the deficit to 51-40 with 14:39 to go, then freshman forward Jordan Mickey split the Wildcat defense for a layup to bring the Wildcat lead to single digits.
Junior guard Anthony Hickey stole the ensuing inbounds pass and kicked to senior guard Andre Stringer, who knocked down a transition 3-pointer to cut the lead to six and force Calipari into a 30-second timeout.
“In the second half, we came out, we turned them over a few times and we got some shots up,” Mickey said. “That’s kind of what helped us out trying to get back into the game towards the end.”
The Tigers got it down to five at the under-12 media timeout. Stringer took a designed inbounds play out of the timeout, laid it in and drew the foul to cut the deficit to three — the closest LSU would get the rest of the way.
Sophomore Wildcat forward Alex Poythress buried a corner 3-pointer on the next possession, Stringer missed a jumper on the Tigers’ trip and Randle rattled off four straight to get the lead back to ten and put the nail in the LSU coffin.
Now the Tigers face a familiar position, headed to Selection Sunday with NIT aspirations that will come down to the final hour.
A decision LSU coach Johnny Jones thinks should go in his team’s favor.
“I think if you look at our body of work, yes, we would look forward to playing in one of the really good post-season tournaments available to us out there,” Jones said.