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LSU Basketball Wins Opener
11/17/08 - 12:12 AM
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BATON ROUGE—The LSU Tigers, playing its first game under new head coach Trent Johnson, pulled away from a stubborn Jackson State Tiger team in the final 20 minutes to score a 79-65 victory Saturday in the season opener at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

The game, part of a rare basketball-football doubleheader on the LSU campus, was the first of a school record 21 home games for LSU and the opening homestand continues Thursday at 7 p.m. with the start of the LSU Invitational.

Bo Spencer scored a career-high 21 points for the Tigers. The sophomore, who made three starts a year ago as a freshman, made seven of his 11 field-goal attempts. He also sank three of his five shots from behind the three-point line. Seniors Tasmin Mitchell and Chris Johnson each scored 17 points for LSU.

Darrion Griffin was the top scorer for Jackson State with 16 points. Grant Maxey and Jeremy Caldwell added 13 points, while De’Suan Dixon contributed 10.

With the game tied at 39-39 at the intermission after a first 20 minutes featuring eight ties and 11 lead changes, the tight game continued into the second half with three more lead changes and Jackson State taking a 47-45 lead with 15:23 to play. LSU would take the lead for good on a dunk by Chris Johnson, 48-47, with 13:44 to go and widened the lead to 55-47 with 11:17 left on a jumper by freshman Storm Warren.

Jackson State wouldn’t go away, cutting the game to 62-59 with 7:58 to go, but LSU closed the game with a 17-6 run. Johnson, Mitchell and Spencer combined for all but two of those points.

“Trent has them playing really well,” said Jackson State Coach Tevester Anderson. “He’s a good coach. I thought their half-court offense in the second half was really good. They really executed much better than they did in the first half. They’re really a fine team. I think this team (LSU) is a typical SEC team. He’s got them playing typical SEC basketball. They’re long, and they shoot the ball pretty well too. They shot the ball 45 of 46 percent from the floor in their first game out. That’s pretty good.”

LSU shot 45.8 percent for the game, 27-of-59, and 15-of-31 (48.4%) in the second half. LSU made 3-of-7 three-pointers in the second half and again the free throw percentage was good, making 21-of-26 or 80 percent. LSU out rebounded the Tigers of Jackson State, 42-30. Jackson State shot 36.4 percent, but just 7-of-26 (26.9 percent) in the second half.

“Sixty-five points and 24 free throws on our home floor are not good enough,” said Trent Johnson. “The thing that disappoints me is that we haven’t practiced like that and we didn’t play like that versus Tulane and New Orleans. Hopefully, this will be something that can be contributed to first game jitters. We definitely need to get it corrected. Give Jackson State credit, we had a concern as a staff and I as a head coach, this was a team that returned four starters and three guys that could really score the ball and had defensive quickness.”