• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 17, 2009 - Page: 1C

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The action at the Maravich Assembly Center was, to be blunt, kind of ugly Monday night.

But ugly is what Storm Warren excels at.

With the shots missing, the sophomore was cleaning up the offensive rebounds. With the opponent struggling to score, Warren was right in the middle of it, blocking shots and taking charges.

Warren had 14 points, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots as LSU overcame 0-for-15 3-point shooting to stifle Indiana State 56-45 in the first round of the NIT Season Tip-Off at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

LSU (2-0) advanced to today’s 7 p.m. second-round game against Western Kentucky, a 69-65 winner over Milwaukee. The winner advances to next week’s final four in New York.

To get there, the Tigers may need to shoot better than they did Monday. Bo Spencer and Tasmin Mitchell, the Tigers’ main guns, were a combined 6-for-31 from the field and 0-for-9 from 3-point range.

But Warren, the 6-foot-7 sophomore from Monroe, had their backs, going 6-for-8 from the field, all six of his shots on second-chance putbacks. Eight of his 12 rebounds were on the offensive end as he recorded his second straight double-double to start the season.

“That’s what he does,” said Mitchell, who also had a big rebounding night, picking up 14 as LSU outrebounded the Sycamores (1-1) 50-28. “That’s his gift. He finds rebounds; that’s what he does. Sometimes, we miss shots and we say ‘Storm’s got it.’”

On this night, the LSU shooters had to say that a lot.

The Tigers didn’t score until Warren hit a pair of free throws with 14:57 left in the first half and didn’t get their first field goal until freshman forward Eddie Ludwig scored with 13:26 left until halftime.

The Sycamores did a bang-up job holding Mitchell to eight points on 2-for-11 shooting and Spencer to 10 points on 4-for-20. But ISU, which plays Milwaukee in a 4:30 p.m. losers’ bracket game, could not take full advantage because of a second straight stellar defensive performance by LSU.

After holding UL-Monroe scoreless for almost the first eight minutes of Friday’s 82-62 season-opening win, the Tigers held ISU to 13-for-43 shooting and one assist in the Sycamores’ Princeton-style passing game.

“What we tried to do was force them out beyond the 3 (pointer) and take them out of their Princeton stuff by helping off a post guy,” LSU coach Trent Johnson said. “For the most part, the kids did it.”