Home, sweet home: LSU eyes yet another PMAC win
   There is one thing that the LSU basketball team has in common with Tennessee’s team – neither squad seems to be able to win on the road.
Both the Tigers and the Vols have lost their last five games away from home, including four Southeastern Conference losses apiece.
The good news for the Tigers is that tonight’s game at 7 p.m. against the Volunteers is at the friendly confines of the PMAC, where LSU has won 11 consecutive contests.
LSU (12-7, 2-4 SEC) is looking to bounce back from a tough trip through the neighboring state of Mississippi last week.
In losses to Ole Miss (16-4, 5-2) last Wednesday and Mississippi State (16-4, 3-3) on Sunday, the Tigers suffered from a lack of interior presence and poor defense.
Ole Miss forwards Justin Reed and Aaron Harper combined for 34 points against LSU, while State dominated the Tigers on the boards, 38-24.
LSU head coach John Brady said he is concerned about Tennessee’s inside players.
“Tennessee presents its own set of problems,” Brady said. “They’ve got two big 6-foot-10 guys. [Marcus] Haislip is one of the most athletic guys in the league at 6-foot-10. They’ve got Vincent Yarbrough at 6-foot-8 who’s been there four years and everybody considers him a first-round draft pick.”
While Tennessee’s record is not much to behold at 9-10 (2 4), Brady said the Vols are much more talented than its record shows.
“Their team, up to this year, has been to four straight NCAA tournaments and won 20 plus games four straight seasons in a row,” he said. “They have good players and they had good players returning. The problem is they’ve lost five games by two or three points.”
LSU junior guard Collis Temple III will continue to play on his fractured foot, but he said his play should improve over his 1 of-6 shooting performance in 27 minutes against the Bulldogs.
“It was kind of frustrating,” Temple said. “Against Mississippi State I hadn’t gotten any real practice in. I had practiced a little the day before. I’ve been doing a little shooting of my own and my shot is really off right now, but hopefully I’ll be able to make a decent enough showing.”
Temple said the Volunteers are not a team that can be easily overlooked.
“I think they have a good team and they just haven’t really come together,” he said. “They’ve had an unfortunate season so far. Maybe you could say they’ve had the luck this year that we had last year.”
Tennessee has played inconsistently at best, ranging from a win over then eighth-ranked Syracuse to a 34-point loss to South Carolina (12-7, 2-4) a week ago.
In their last outing against Auburn, the Vols dominated every aspect of the game on their way to an 82-59 win.
For LSU, it was just the opposite in its last game as Mississippi State dominated the match, winning 84-61.
The Tigers lost the game mostly due to poor defense, LSU junior forward Ronald Dupree said.
“We didn’t play as a team,” Dupree said. “We just wore down defensively, myself included. The whole team stunk.”
The Tigers allowed State to shoot 62.7 percent from the field while shooting only 39.3 percent themselves.
“The only game [this season] I didn’t like how we played was the last 15 minutes or so against Mississippi State,” Brady said. “We just didn’t get back in transition, get our defense set, and they ran right by us.”
As shown in the win against Auburn and the loss to State, defense has been the key for LSU to succeed, Dupree said.
Dupree believes that if the Tigers hope to win against Tennessee, they will need to play much better defense than they did on Sunday.
“Personally, my performance [against State], I didn’t like it at all,” Dupree said. “I just want to play tight defensively. Teams are watching the tapes and they’re going to try to come after me, so my main focus is getting better defensively, and that’s the bottom line.”
Ronnie Richard