Mickles: Johnson delivers wake-up call

• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jan 4, 2009 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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After nearly letting a game slip away on New Year’s Eve to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the LSU basketball team was having some trouble shaking another in-state opponent early in the second half Saturday night.

This time, it was Southeastern Louisiana that wouldn’t go away.

Ignoring LSU’s 73-game home court winning streak against Louisiana competition, pesky SLU grabbed a two-point lead twice and was tied five times in the first half before falling behind 39-31 at halftime.

Then, the Lions mounted one last charge in the first three minutes of the second half, first cutting the deficit to four points then making a lot more noise later on a thunderous slam dunk by Warrell Span after a turnover by the Tigers.

That quickly brought LSU coach Trent Johnson off the bench for a timeout, which apparently helped energize the Tigers and send them to a 90-61 blowout victory in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

“Our last game out, we didn’t come out hard,” said Tigers guard Marcus Thornton, “and Coach (Johnson) put it in our heads that we were going to come out harder than we did in the last game. To see them get hyper on our court, that made coach frustrated. So he gave it to us again, and told us that we had to come out hard and defend our home court. And that’s what we did.”

Actually, Johnson said he wasn’t upset that Southeastern had whittled down LSU’s lead to 44-38 on the dunk by Span with 16:36 remaining. A turnover on a 3-on-2 fast break on the offensive end of the floor led to Span’s easy dunk, which brought about the timeout.
“I called timeout because of the loose-ball situation,” Johnson said. “We didn’t make a solid basketball play and got cute with the ball. That’s why I called the timeout … we got cute with the basketball. “They knew what was going on. They knew what was coming.”

His timeout was certainly timely, said LSU forward Tasmin Mitchell.

“A dunk is a dunk, but coach Johnson woke us up,” said Mitchell, who finished with 24 points. “He called a timeout and told us to get settled and poised, and to play the game the way we know how to play.”

After their little talk, the Tigers turned it on. Mitchell poured in seven of LSU’s next 12 points and Thornton, who had a game-high 33, hit a 3-point basket to blow it open. From then on, SLU never had a chance as LSU built the lead to as many as 32 points with 3:03 left.
“Southeastern’s played some pretty good teams,” said Tigers guard Garrett Temple. “They played some good games against good competition. In the second half, we had to put them away. We had to step on their neck, and that’s what we did after that timeout.”

SLU coach Jim Yarbrough was certainly impressed.

“I thought LSU had a point to prove and they came out in good fashion, especially in the second half,” he said. “When they smelled blood in the water, they did their job.”