Tigers lord it over Little Brother in NIT

Published 10:22 pm Thursday, March 15, 2018

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{{tncms-inline alignment=”left” content=”<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>LSU 84 | UL-Lafayette 76</strong></p>” id=”bc92906a-72e4-40e3-b019-e6616989ea88″ style-type=”quote” title=”Pull Quote” type=”relcontent”}}

BATON ROUGE — The big question going into an intriguing matchup — rare for a first-round NIT game — was why LSU and Louisiana-Lafayette didn’t do this sort of thing more often.

Don’t look for them to get together again anytime soon. Or maybe it was a suggestion that they should play every week.

LSU reveled in the role of “Big Brother” and held off a late charge by the Ragin’ Cajuns to advance in the National Invitation Tournament with an 84-76 victory over the cross-Atchafalaya rivals.

LSU, which won an NIT home game for the first time in four tries, advanced to play the winner of the Utah-Cal Davis game that was played later Wednesday night.

The game, however, was just the prelim.

The end and postgame was bitter-rival ugly as tempers flared after more than 39 minutes of entertaining basketball and relative peace and harmony.

No punches or anything, but LSU coach Will Wade didn’t mind rubbing it in when he called time out with 12 seconds remaining and the game out of reach at 84-75.

Apparently, Wade didn’t appreciate some of the remarks ULL counterpart Bob Marlin made in the days leading up to the game — most notably, that LSU (18-14) didn’t want to play the Cajuns (27-7) now or ever, that ULL should have been the higher seed and that the game should have been in Lafayette where his team had the better gym.

“We’re about action, not talk here,” Wade said.

Wade appeared to direct a comment toward Marlin as he called the timeout, and the coaches earned a double-technical when they had to be restrained from getting in each others’ faces.

When the game ended for good, the two coaches brushed by each with a no-look half-handshake and a few moments later several players from sides got into some mild pushing and posturing.

LSU fans, who spent the fourth quarter chanting “Lit-tle Bro-ther” and the large contingent of Cajuns fans booed lustily at the players, each other and most things in between.

“I was just glad we were able to win for our fans,” Wade said. “I can’t imagine what (the trash-talking) was like for them.”

But why the meaningless timeout?

“Since they don’t get to play us very often, I thought they should get the chance to enjoy playing us (a little longer),” Wade said somewhat sarcastically.

At first he feigned not remembered what he commented when calling the timeout.

“Maybe, ‘Enjoy this,’” he said. “I can’t remember.

“It is what it is. I take exception when people take shots at our program. Before Monday (when Marlin made his comments) I never gave ULL a second thought. But after the late couple of days … it’s been something else. I’ve never seen anything like it. Talking about they should be playing at home …”

Wade proceeded to trash ULL’s relatively easy strength of schedule as an explanation as to why the game was in the Assembly Center.

“We have an arena, not a gym,” Wade said with his voice rising. “Let’s be clear: we’re not scared to play anyone. Let’s be clear about that. We’re not scared. Period. Point blank.”

He said, who said … what?

“No comment about what he says,” Marlin said. “He’s going to run his program and I’m going to run mine, hopefully with class.

“It was an intense game. That’s the way it should be.”

There was a game, the long-awaiting matchup between the Southeastern Conference’s ninth-place team and the Sun Belt regular-season champion.

“We had to take care of business,” LSU’s Duop Reath said of how Wade used the ULL comments to fire up the Tigers before the game. Reath led all scorers with 26 points.

The game had one lead change when the Tigers, who fell behind 10-2 early, went on a 12-0 run and took the lead for good, 12-10, with 2:03 remaining in the first quarter.

LSU led 40-28 at the half and by as many as 14 early in the third quarter. But ULL briefly cut it to 73-72 with 1:39 to play before the Tigers got two steals for another quick spurt.

“The difference was in the paint,” Wade said. “We dominated them in the paint.”

Brandon Sampson added 18 for the Tigers and, with star Tremont Waters in mild foul trouble, Skylar Mays came off the bench for 11.

Baton Rouge native Frank Bartley led four Cajuns in double figures with 21 points, including five 3-pointers.

The Tigers were outrebounded as usual, 40-35, including 21 offensive boards for the Cajuns that led to 20 second-chance points.

LSU was cold from outside — the Tigers didn’t have a 3-point field goal until the final minute of the second quarter and were 4 of 18 for the game, but used their athleticism to penetrate for easy buckets.

The Tigers made 12 of their first 14 shots from inside the arc in taking control.

But Marlin wasn’t backing off one pregame statement.

“I still think this game should have been played in Lafayette,” he said. “If we played this game in Lafayette, it would have been different, in my opinion.”

LSU 84 | UL-Lafayette 76