3-0 Tigers battle No. 13 Huskies

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 25, 2009 - Page: 1C

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As the game wore on against Western Kentucky, the shots started falling for the LSU men’s basketball team.

Ice cold coming into the game, Bo Spencer warmed up as the game went along and hit four 3-pointers. Even one of the LSU big men, Dennis Harris, knocked down a mid-range jumper late in the Tigers’ 71-60 win over Western Kentucky on Nov. 17.

“Everybody has an off night,” said Harris, who, despite standing close to 6-foot-11, comes to LSU as a player with a reputation as an outside shooter. “I just feel like you continue to get jump shots off and progress as the season goes.”

Despite some struggles shooting, LSU is off to a 3-0 start and, as a result, the Tigers have a heck of a gym to work on their shots over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The Tigers play No. 13 Connecticut in the first semifinal of the NIT Season Tip-Off at 6 p.m. today at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

LSU, which advanced to the semifinals by beating Indiana State and Western Kentucky at home last week, will play either Arizona State or Duke on Friday. Losers will play first in the consolation game, followed by the championship game.

For many of LSU’s players, this will be the first trip to the Garden and its years of history. Not so much for UConn’s coach.

“My (sports information director) said this will be like my 73rd or 74th game in Madison Square Garden,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. “All that means is that I’m old.”

Old, maybe. Crafty and successful, certainly, as LSU coach Trent Johnson attested last week.

“What he’s done there is unbelievable in my mind,” Johnson said, noting Calhoun’s place in the Basketball Hall of Fame. “A lot of coaches inherit programs with rich traditions or rich history and a lot of coaches follow a program that’s already in place. He’s taken that thing from the bottom up.”

That makes today a tough place for a young Tigers team to continue to progress in what has been a mildly surprising start. Harris is one of three freshmen who played every game in a nine-man rotation that also includes four sophomores, a junior and senior.

The Tigers have excelled defensively, holding opponents to 35.7 percent shooting and 55.7 points per game. But the Tigers have yet to find a consistent shooting stroke, going 10-for-51 from 3-point range.

Johnson said he didn’t expect his team to shoot 3-pointers well, but it shot well closer to the basket either.