Tigers Come Up Short in Tuscaloosa

A hard fought but ultimately futile effort

Much like they did last Saturday in College Station, the LSU men’s basketball team (12-7, 1-5) played a pretty good but otherwise incomplete game against #4 Alabama (17-3, 6-1) losing 80-73 last night.

Alabama has now won 10 of the last 11 meetings against LSU.

The Tide and Tigers traded buckets throughout the first half and the two teams went into halftime tied at 40. The back-and-forth nature of the game extended about five minutes into the second half before Alabama kicked into a gear that LSU simply couldn’t match.

LSU’s final lead came at the 15:23 mark in the second half, leading by a slim 50-49 margin. From that point on, Alabama outscored LSU 28 to 14 and ended up leading by as many as 13 points with about two minutes to play.

The Tigers evidently forgot the three-ball in Baton Rouge as LSU shot an appalling 3-23 from behind the line. Alabama also attempted 23 threes. The difference? The Tide hit on seven of those 23 attempts. A couple of extra makes by LSU might have changed the entire complexion of Saturday’s game.

LSU did a pretty good job against Alabama in every aspect of the game besides the whole “shooting” thing. LSU out-rebounded Alabama 43-41 thanks in large part to 18 boards by Corey Chest; the Tigers also had two more points in the paint, 40 to 38, and three more second chance points, 14 vs. 11, than Alabama; the two teams ended up having the same amount of turnovers (14), but LSU was able to turn them into 17 points, while Alabama could only manage 11 points off turnovers.

The difference was LSU made most of their plays in the first half, while Alabama saved their best for winning time. As a team the Tide out-rebounded LSU 24-20 in the second half. Those 18 rebounds Corey Chest had? Only three came in the second half. The Tide are also the deeper team and the Bama bench outscored LSU’s 26 to 11 in the second half.

This late January stretch of at Texas A&M, at Alabama and home against Auburn was always going to a difficult part of LSU’s schedule, and while LSU’s played hard in the first two games we’re not in the business of moral victories. Hard fought losses against the Aggies and Tide are just that: losses, and through the first third of SEC play the Tigers are once again toward the bottom of the league standings. At least Trey’Dez Green, playing in his first game of the season, had a cool block and dunk.

LSU will have the next three days to build off what they did against Alabama before coming back to the PMAC to host #1 Auburn at 6:00 P.M. on the SEC Network.