By BRETT MARTEL
The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — The ball nearly got away from LSU’s Tremont Waters during one of the 5-foot-11 point guard’s brazen, penetrating dribbles into a crowd of towering defenders.
Waters saved his dribble by darting along the baseline toward an empty corner, where he turned, saw no one had followed him, and buried a 3-pointer.
“That’s good coaching,” LSU coach Will Wade deadpanned. “He’s just a very instinctive player and a very, very good player. You can’t teach that.”
Mississippi State, meanwhile, couldn’t figure out how to neutralize Waters, whose 14 points and 10 assists helped LSU close out its regular season with a 78-57 victory over the Bulldogs on Saturday.
“Tremont did a good job controlling the game,” Wade said.
Aaron Epps highlighted his 16-point performance with a back-breaking 3 with 2:19 to go, and Brandon Sampson had his best game in a month with 16 points and three steals for LSU (17-13, 8-10 Southeastern Conference).
New Orleans native Lamar Peters scored 15 points and Quinndary Weatherspoon added 12 points for the Bulldogs (21-10, 9-9), who could have used a road victory in the league to solidify their credentials for an NCAA Tournament bid.
Instead, LSU won its sixth straight home game to take some momentum into next week’s SEC Tournament in St. Louis, where the Tigers likely have to win out to get an NCAA berth.
“We struggled to defend them all day,” lamented Bulldogs coach Ben Howland, adding that LSU “is a team that can make some noise in the SEC Tournament. Their guard play is very good.”
LSU capitalized on open perimeter shots Waters helped create, hitting 11 of 23 from 3-point range. Waters went 3-for-4 from deep and Epps 4-for-8.
MSU went just 6-for-23 from 3-point range, which Howland emphasized was “not good enough.”
“We had to get it inside more and attack the rim,” Howland said, adding that a number of the Bulldogs’ missed 3s “were decent looks that we just didn’t knock down.
“I’m hoping that the rest we’re going to get the next few days will help us get our legs back,” he said.
The game closed out a brilliant regular season for Waters, the first SEC freshman since Kentucky’s John Wall in 2010 to average 15 points and five assists in a season. He had already broken Ben Simmons’s single-season assists record at LSU. His fourth 10-assist game gives him 177 this season.
Yet Waters declined to discuss what his success so far could mean for LSU going forward.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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