BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU center Justin Hamilton was putting his uniform on Saturday night when he learned the Universty of Alabama men’s basketball team had suspended top scorer and rebounder JaMychal Green and two other regulars.
Moments later, Tigers coach Trent Johnson urged his players to remain focused on their game plan and not underestimate the remaining members of the Crimson Tide.
“We just wanted to remember what happened in Alabama,” Hamilton said, alluding to LSU’s 69-53 loss on Jan. 11. “We wanted to come out and play a lot better, and so we had our minds focused.”
Hamilton scored 12 of his team-high 21 points in the second half, and LSU held off Alabama for a 67-58 victory.
Johnny O’Bryant III had 17 points and nine rebounds, and Andre Stinger added 15 points for LSU (14-10, 4-6 Southeastern Conference), which snapped the Crimson Tide’s three-game winning streak.
“Any win that we can get at this time of year or throughout the year is a good win,” Johnson said. “It’s not about who they didn’t have. It’s always going to be about our approach to a game in terms of competing.”
Rodney Cooper scored a career-high 28 points for Alabama (16-8, 5-5), which played without its top three scorers and top two rebounders because of four suspensions in a span of six days.
Green, third-leading scorer Trevor Releford and Andrew Steele were driven back to Tuscaloosa on Saturday by a graduate assistant after coach Anthony Grant learned of an earlier incident involving the three players. Grant declined to discuss any specifics about the violation, other than to say it was not related to Tony Mitchell’s suspension last Monday for conduct detrimental to the team.
Mitchell is Alabama’s second-leading scorer and rebounder.
“The thing that’s most disappointing is how it affects so many other people, from loved ones and teammates and the program, the goals of the program, and then those that care deeply about this university,” Grant said. “Obviously, I take responsibility for these young men in terms of the decisions and hopefully the values that they learn or get built upon from their families when they come to me. So (we’ve) just got to continue to try to make sure we do as best a job as we can to give them opportunities to learn and continue to grow as young men.”
Grant said he had not decided whether any of the four suspended players would return for Alabama’s next game Tuesday against Florida and declined to say what those players would need to do to earn reinstatement.
After trailing by 16 at halftime, Alabama got back in the game with a 12-0 run to open the second half. Nick Jacobs, who had 14 points, started the surge with a jumper. Then Cooper, who came in averaging 3.9 points per game, scored 10 straight points. He converted a three-point play on a jumper as he was fouled, followed by his 3-pointer, layup and short jumper in the paint to cut LSU’s lead to 31-27.
“In the second half coach Grant emphasized (for me to) go out and be very aggressive whenever I touched the ball, and I thank my teammates for finding me in places so I could make shots,” said Cooper, whose previous high was 15 points, and who scored 22 of his points in the second half alone.
LSU did not score its first points of the second half until O’Bryan’s layup made it 33-27 with 14:53 to go.
Alabama twice got as close as three points, the last time on a 3 by Charles Hankerson Jr. that made it 42-39 with 11:25 left. The Tigers were able to keep the Tide from getting closer thanks to dominant play inside by Hamilton and O’Bryant, who each scored in double digits over the last 15 minutes.
Alabama was still within two possessions after Trevor Lackey’s 3 with 2:27 to go, but LSU’s Anthony Hickey responded with a 3 — his first basket of the game — that made it 60-51 with 1:38 left, and the Tide did not threaten again.
“We found a way to play through a little adversity (and) kept our composure,” Johnson said.
LSU wound up outshooting Alabama, 49 percent (24 of 49) to 40.7 percent (22 of 54) and outrebounded the Tide 34-27.
With his team undermanned, Grant went with a starting lineup of Lacey and Ben Eblen in the back court, and Cooper, Jacobs and Levi Randolph in the front court. Four of those players are freshmen who each had started at least nine games this season. Eblen, a junior, was making his first start of the campaign.
“I just coached the guys that were available and I thought these guys competed,” Grant said. “As a coach you want them to leave it all on the floor and that’s the thing we talked about over the course of the game. It is what it is in terms of our man power.”
Without Mitchell at Auburn last Tuesday, Alabama still managed to win its third straight. With three more regulars missing against LSU, the Tide struggled to keep pace with the Tigers early on.
Stringer’s two early jump shots, one from 3-point range, helped LSU race to a 10-2 lead. John Isaac’s layup gave LSU its first double-digit lead at 21-11 and the gap got as wide as 16 points when Hamilton’s free throws made it 31-15. That score stood until halftime, marking a season-low in points for Alabama in a half.
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