The LSU men’s basketball team will live to play at least one more day.
The No. 14-seeded Tigers won their opener at the SEC Tournament on Wednesday night, beating the No. 11-seeded Georgia Bulldogs 72-67 despite squandering a 12-point halftime lead.
The win gives LSU (14-18, 3-16 SEC) its third victory against an SEC team this season, and now the Tigers will take on the Vanderbilt Commodores — who they beat just a few weeks ago — in the second round on Thursday.
Neither team was particularly efficient offensively in the first half. LSU outshot Georgia 40.5% to 37.5%, but the main difference in the opening frame proved to be turnovers.
UGA had eight giveaways to the Tigers’ one, and that resulted in nine points going the other way. It allowed LSU to stretch its lead to 42-30 as it took a comfortable advantage to the locker room.
However, the Tigers had a very inefficient second half offensively. They shot 31% from the field, while Georgia was much better and shot 42.3%. The Bulldogs stormed back and ultimately managed to take the lead with just over four minutes to play.
But LSU didn’t waver, and thanks to a couple of timely shots down the stretch from [autotag]KJ Williams[/autotag] and [autotag]Shawn Phillips[/autotag], who recorded 18 and 13 points, respectively, allowed the Tigers to hang on. Phillips finished with a double-double, as did Trae [autotag]Hannibal[/autotag] with 14 points and 11 rebounds.
LSU will hope to keep its slim hopes at an auto-bid in the NCAA Tournament alive against the Commodores on Thursday night.
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