• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Feb 9, 2010 - Page: 1C

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In the past two games, Bo Spencer has taken a more aggressive posture when it comes to trying to find a solution to LSU’s offensive woes.

The junior guard is simply shooting more, a choice that’s always an option considering that he’s a guard who often handles the ball. And his choices to shoot more have resulted in 25 points in both the 59-54 loss to Tennessee and the 81-55 loss to Kentucky.

He scored 50 of LSU’s 109 points in the past two games.

And before you chalk this up to simple ball-hogging, note that he also assisted on five of the 22 LSU baskets he did not score in those two games. He also attempted 43 of the 125 LSU field goals, a much lower percentage of field-goal attempts than the percentage of the team’s points he scored.

So yes, Spencer has been dominating the ball, but lately, at least, things seem to have gone a little better when he does.

“Both of those teams did a great job defending us,” Spencer said of Tennessee and Kentucky. “I don’t want to downplay (Kentucky star point guard John Wall), but we expected their guards to do a lot more, and they did a good job on the interior with (Patrick) Patterson, (Daniel) Orton and (DeMarcus) Cousins. They blocked shots, and their team defense did a lot to take the normal shots away.”

So Spencer often created shots off the dribble and had some success, going 9-for-24 from the floor and 5-for-5 at the free-throw line. That followed an 8-for-19 performance against Tennessee that included four 3-point field goals.

“I didn’t want to take too many bad shots,” Spencer said. “But sometimes they seemed like the only shots we could get.”

At first blush, that might be considered an explanation for an erratic shooting season for Spencer, who is scoring a career-best 15.5 points per game, but on 34.2 percent shooting and a career-worst 27.6 percent 3-point shooting.

He is also far more likely to attack with the dribble drive than a season ago. As a result, his turnovers are way up to 82 turnovers this season, giving him a negative assists-to-turnover ratio (he has 63 assists) for the first time in his career.

Last year, with defenses focused on stopping Marcus Thornton on the perimeter, Spencer took fewer shots, a higher percentage of which were open. As a result, he made them more often (41.2 percent) and committed fewer turnovers (63) while averaging 11.4 points per game.

Coach Trent Johnson said his lower percentages aren’t all because his guard has to take tougher shots.

“The whole season hasn’t been Kentucky,” Johnson said, referencing Saturday’s game in which Johnson said LSU had such a tough time with the Wildcats’ interior defensive presence, difficult shot attempts by Spencer were often the best option. “What I meant by that is (Kentucky’s) length, their athleticism, their ability to guard made it where you probably weren’t going to get a shot. Other guys weren’t going to force a shot off the bounce.”