SEC showdown

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Feb 11, 2009 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

The big game in the Southeastern Conference tonight involves LSU playing at Mississippi State.

Exactly why is it big? Don’t ask the SEC-leading Tigers, who haven’t started checking the standings yet.

“I have no clue,” said center Chris Johnson, when asked who was second place in the conference behind the Tigers.

“Kentucky? Florida?,” guessed forward Tasmin Mitchell when asked who he thought might be in second.

Mitchell was half right. When he was asked on Monday, Florida (which played Kentucky last night) was tied with Mississippi State (16-7, 6-2) for the second-best record in the SEC. A win today in Starkville, Miss., would allow the Bulldogs to tie the Tigers (19-4, 7-1) for the SEC lead.

How big is that? Try an LSU win would create a two-game cushion in the SEC West for LSU and would make the Tigers tough to catch, at least for the lead in the division, considering that the Tigers would also have a tie-breaker advantage, courtesy of a sweep, over MSU. A Mississippi State win would make it a two-way tie atop of the division, a split of the season series, setting up a dogfight for the finish.

But with LSU’s SEC schedule just moving past the halfway point, it’s way too early for the Tigers to start worrying about those kinds of ramifications.

“Personally, I don’t like looking at (the standings) because it gets into your head and you seem to lose focus a little bit,” Johnson said. “The main focus is just going out on a consistent basis and being able to compete for 40 minutes on every possession.

“That’s been working for us and we are going to continue to do that.”

While LSU may be a bit oblivious to the significance of its game today, Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury is well aware that the road to the West title, and maybe the overall title, goes through LSU.

“It’s pretty obvious that at this point of the season, we are going to play the best team in the SEC,” Stansbury said. “No question, they are the team to beat.”

Stansbury has reason to admire the Tigers, who dismantled his Bulldogs 81-57 in Baton Rouge on Jan. 21. In that game, the Tigers completely took the Bulldogs out of their comfort zone, namely their spread-the-floor, 3-point shooting offense. LSU held the Bulldogs to 5-for-20 3-point shooting, well below MSU’s average of 8.3 3-pointers per game, the most in the SEC, and well off the Dogs’ 38.7 percent 3-point shooting for the season.

“There’s not much you can take from our game here other than the fact that I thought we really got up and got after them,” LSU coach Trent Johnson said. “But that game was in the balance when Marcus (Thornton) went on one of his little shooting spurts and we got some separation. But they are also playing a lot better. I think we are better, but they’re playing a lot better right now and they’re really confident shooting it deep.”