LSU was ranked as high No. 12 earlier in the season.
Then a couple of starters got injured and the Tigers started losing.
Even the return of both injured players couldn’t prevent a fourth loss in five games when TCU beat the No. 19 Tigers 77-68 in the Big 12/SEC Challenge on Saturday in Fort Worth, Texas.
LSU (16-5, 4-4) returns to SEC play when it meets Ole Miss (11-10, 2-6) on Tuesday night in Baton Rouge, La.
Darius Days, the Tigers’ leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, returned from an ankle injury that limited him in two games and kept him out of a third. He scored 14 points and grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds in 32 minutes against the Horned Frogs.
Starting point guard Xavier Pinson, the team’s third-leading scorer, returned from a five-game absence due to a knee sprain, but played just seven minutes with a brace on his right knee, making two free throws and missing all three of his field-goal attempts.
“We wanted to shake the rust off Xavier,” coach Will Wade said.
LSU trailed by 16 points in the second half and got as close as one point, but TCU rebuilt the lead and scored the most points the Tigers have allowed this season.
“We got ourselves back in the game,” Wade said. “It was a rough-and-tumble game. We just couldn’t finish it off. That was the first time all year I thought our defense let us down.”
The offense wasn’t much better. LSU shot just 36.9 percent for the game, including 28.6 percent in the first half.
Ole Miss won for the first time in its seven appearances in the Big 12/SEC Challenge when it defeated Kansas State 67-56 on Saturday in Oxford, Miss.
“We made it a big thing to our team about the Big 12/SEC Challenge,” Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said. “We were representing Ole Miss, but we were also representing the SEC. It’s a prestigious thing. All eyes in basketball are on this day between the two leagues. Everybody’s arguing which league is the best. I told our players it’s an honor to play in it. We approached it that way.”
Ole Miss shot 45.1 percent from the floor and held the Wildcats to 30.2 percent. The Rebels had a 43-33 rebounding edge and outscored KSU 32-14 in the paint.
“I thought we had multiple guys play well and I thought we guarded well,” Davis said. “To hold that team to 30 percent, we outrebounded them by 10 and I just thought we had a lot of toughness, especially the last eight to 10 minutes of the game.”
Daeshun Ruffin led Ole Miss with 17 points and seven rebounds, Matthew Murrell added nine points and seven rebounds and Nysier Brooks had a team-high nine boards for the Rebels.
“I feel like (rebounding) helped us,” Ruffin said. “When guards come down to grab those 50-50 balls, it definitely credits to our win. We stat our 50-50 balls, and I feel like me going to get those seven was just an extra boost.”
–Field Level Media
