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The sugar high the LSU athletic program has been on in the past week continued Saturday night in the PMAC.
Three days after the LSU football team’s 41-14 victory over the University of Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, the No. 14 men’s basketball team (11-3) exacted some sweet revenge on No. 19 University of Connecticut (12-2, 1-1 Big East), defeating the Huskies 66-49 in front of 12,023 enthusiastic fans.
Junior forward Glen Davis tied for the lead in scoring with 16 points before fouling out with 1:35 remaining in the game.
Sophomore forward Tasmin Mitchell recorded a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds, and sophomore guard Garrett Temple chipped in 14 points.
LSU’s defense held the Huskies’ leading scorer, freshman guard Jerome Dyson, to 3-for-10 shooting, but Dyson was 4-for-6 from the free-throw line and finished with a team-high 12 points. The much-talked about game was a rematch of the No. 2 Huskies’ 67-66 win against the unranked Tigers on Jan. 7, 2006 in Hartford, Conn.
This season’s LSU-Connecticut matchup was so anticipated that ESPN chose Baton Rouge as the host site for the network’s season premiere of “ESPN’s College Gameday.”
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Fans lined up hours in advance to attend the Saturday morning broadcast of the show. The first 260 students who arrived at the PMAC for “Gameday” received vouchers to sit in the 100-level student section for Saturday night’s game.
Jimbo Gravois, mathematics senior, said he believed the aura created by one of television’s most popular cable networks being on campus would be too much for Connecticut to handle.
“People camped out last night, and [the team] knows how much we support them,” Gravois said. “Just being in this atmosphere is going to be huge.”
Video by Megan Carter and Heather Nolan
Gravois prediction seemed to be inaccurate at the start of the contest. The Huskies jumped out to a quick 7-0 lead, and a jumper by Hasheem Thabeet with 11:50 left in the first half gave Connecticut its largest lead of the game, 15-6.
Davis sat out the final 6:35 of the half, but the Tigers played the Huskies’ close and used a 14-4 run, which ended with a Tack Minor 3-pointer as time expired, to take their first lead of the game going into halftime, 30-28.
The intermission proved to be a turning point in the game. The Tigers’ defense slowed the Huskies’ fast-break offense in the second half and held Connecticut to 7-for-24 shooting in the final 20 minutes.
Sophomore guard A.J. Price, who finished the game with only four points on 1-for-9 shooting, said the change in the speed of the game affected his team’s offensive production.
“We slowed down (after halftime),” Price said. “We started running a half-court offense. They took us out of what we wanted to do by being physical.”
Poor free-throw shooting did not help the Huskies’ chances of winning either. Connecticut shot 11-for-24 from the charity stripe in the game, while LSU connected on 16 of its 22 foul shot attempts.
The Huskies committed 12 of their 19 turnovers in the second half, and runs of 12-4 and 15-6 in the second half sealed the win for the Tigers. LSU coach John Brady said the play of his non-starters helped catapult the Tigers to their second win this season against a nationally-ranked opponent.
“I thought it was a very physical game, and we had some great play out of our bench,” Brady said. “I was also proud of (junior guard) Tack (Minor) coming in and giving us some positive minutes. (Sophomore forward) Magnum (Rolle) had his moments of good play. We are going to need that effective bench play, particularly when we go on the road Tuesday at Alabama.”
Minor had seven points, three assists and no turnovers in the game, and Rolle added four points, six rebounds and four blocks.
Minor said a shift in personal focus was one reason for his good performance Saturday.
“I focused on defense first,” Minor said. “The offense will come if I play good defense. That is a big step that I am trying to do this year.”
Davis said Rolle’s play against the Huskies’ could be a sign of things to come once Southeastern Conference play begins Tuesday against the University of Alabama.
“Today I saw some things that he does in practice,” Davis said. “When he plays me, he plays like an All-American. It was the coming-out party of Magnum Rolle, hopefully.”
Davis said the win against a high-quality opponent such as Connecticut could give the team an emotional boost going into its SEC schedule.
“Hopefully we can take this momentum and carry it over there to Tuscaloosa, even though (current Alabama and former LSU football coach) Nick Saban is stealing all the fun over there,” he said.
—–Contact Tyler Batiste at [email protected]