Tigers look to continue good play

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jan 31, 2009 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:35 a.m.

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

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

After LSU’s men’s basketball team lost to Xavier 80-70 a week ago today, Tigers center Chris Johnson sent a mass text message to teammates apologizing for his performance.

“In the Xavier game, I wasn’t real aggressive on defense and Xavier scored at will,” Johnson said Thursday, a few days after the text.

On Wednesday, he showed that he would do more than just apologize for a performance not up to his standard. The 6-foot-11 senior followed the Xavier game with a 14-point, 14-rebound, four-blocked shot performance in LSU’s 79-73 win at Tennessee. The clutch effort included a key block late in the game when the Volunteers were challenging what had been an LSU lead most of the night.

With former players from all eras in town today for LSU’s 100-year celebration for its basketball program and for LSU’s 4 p.m. game against Arkansas, perhaps the center’s text message, and his actions in the game after the text, is another sign LSU’s players have embraced the teamwork and accountability the former players will like to see.

“That speaks for the kind of kid Chris Johnson is,” coach Trent Johnson said. “A reporter asked me if he sent me the text and I said ‘No he didn’t,’ but he doesn’t have to when he plays like that coming off what he thought was a bad game. He was guarding a pretty special player in Derrick Brown.

“So Chris is playing better.”

And so, as team, is LSU.

After beating preseason Southeastern Conference favorite Tennessee, the Tigers (16-4, 4-1 SEC) come into today with four straight conference wins. LSU is one of four SEC teams with one league loss and the Tigers are tied with Mississippi State atop the SEC West standings at 4-1.

During the recent stretch, the Tigers seem to have cleared a couple of hurdles that had bedeviled them early in the season. With a win two weeks ago at Ole Miss, the Tigers won on the road for the first time. With the Tennessee win, LSU for the first time won a close game against a highly touted opponent. Against Xavier, LSU succumbed to a second-half Musketeers surge. Against Tennessee, the Tigers weathered the storm of a 13-0 second-half run by the Volunteers and found a way to close out the game.

“We stayed poised and that was the best thing about that (Tennessee) game,” guard Garrett Temple said. “They actually took a lead, but we just stayed with it.”

The LSU upswing comes just in time for the sold-out Centennial celebration. Before the game, past Tigers greats will play an alumni game. At halftime, LSU will announce its All-Century team. Temple said the timing of the old-timers returning home is good.

“It’s not as much of a distraction (having a celebration) when you’re winning,” Temple said. “The hoopla is expected. We’re holding up our end of the bargain. You wouldn’t want to go into this game with a 1-4 record.”

Not that LSU doesn’t have kinks to work out. And, oh yeah, Arkansas (13-5, 1-4) is also no slouch of an opponent, despite a slow start in the SEC.