LSU’s Marcus Thornton scored 30 points and Tasmin Mitchell scored 27 as the visiting Tigers handed Georgia its ninth straight loss, 80-62, on Wednesday night in Athens. “Those two kids are good,” said interim Bulldog head coach Pete Hermann. “They made tough shots, they’re good players, they’re veteran players.”
LSU (18-4, 6-1) used a 9-1 run at the start of the second half to extend its 35-31 halftime lead and never looked back. The Tigers shot 54 percent from the field in the second half and for the game made 50 percent of their shots, while making 57 percent of their 2-point field goals. Georgia, which shot 50 percent from the field in the first half, could only find the bottom of the nets 26.7 percent of the time in the second half. “We weren’t getting stops on defense and it led to selfishness on offense,” said Georgia forward Trey Thompkins. “Guys weren’t making the extra pass we were making against Alabama or guys were taking contested shots.”
Terrance Woodbury led the Bulldogs (9-13, 0-7) with 22 points and early on it looked as if the home team might be able to pick up its first SEC win this season. The Georgia starters stood toe-to-toe with LSU out of the gates, but its bench could not keep the success going. The Tigers used a 17-4 run to snap a 10-10 and give them a 27-14 lead with 13:44 remaining in the first half. The Bulldogs came back however, and cut LSU’s lead to four at halftime. “We make the comeback in the first half because we are playing together and moving the ball and we’re getting stops,” Herrmann said. “When we stopped getting stops in the second half and got a little bit sticky with the ball things went a little backwards for us.”
Thompkins scored all 10 of his points in the first half, as Georgia had success getting the ball inside to him and Jeremy Price in the first half. “I wanted Trey and Jeremy and Albert [Jackson] to get a little deeper in the post, so we wouldn’t have to take a couple of bounces and allow the defense to come to us,” Herrmann said. “We did a good job and obviously it was close at the half. We didn’t do quite as well in the second half because we weren’t defending and lost our lead on the glass also.”
This was Herrmann’s second game as interim head coach, following the dismissal of Dennis Felton. There should not be any need for an adjustment period as Hermann was Felton’s long-time assistant both at Western Kentucky and Georgia. “Coach Herrmann runs the same things coach Felton ran,” Thompkins said. “It’s just another guy at the head. It’s no different from what coach Felton did.”
Georgia lost its last contest, 75-70, at Alabama, marking their eighth consecutive defeat, which was the school’s longest losing streak since the 2000-01 season. Their nine-game streak is the longest since the 1974-75 season when the Bulldogs lost 11 in a row. Georgia’s chances of picking up its first conference win will not get any easier anytime soon as the game with the Tigers marked the first of four consecutive games in which Georgia will face a team that currently has a winning record in conference play. The Bulldogs travel to South Carolina on Saturday for a 5 p.m. tipoff, before visiting Tennessee next Wednesday and hosting Florida on Feb. 14.
Butler can be reached at jbutler@scoreatl.com.
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