With first-team All-SEC guard John Jenkins on the bench with a toe injury, Vanderbilt still outclassed LSU in the final first-round game of the SEC tournament Thursday night at the Georgia Dome.
The Commodores dinged the Tigers with an 18-4 run to start the second half on their way to a 62-50 win. Vanderbilt, the East 3rd seed, will move on to a second-round game with West 2nd seed Mississippi State Friday night at 10 p.m.
In the teams' only regular-season meeting, the Commodores defeated the Bulldogs 81-74 Jan. 27 in Starkville.
Thursday, Vanderbilt held LSU, the SEC's lowest-scoring team, to 30.5 percent shooting from the floor.
"They out-rebound you, they block shots," LSU coach Trent Johnson said. "They're very physical in terms of how they bump you off cuts within the confines of the game."
Jenkins sat out after injuring his toe in Vanderbilt's final game of the regular season. The SEC's scoring leader is considered questionable for Friday. Coach Kevin Stallings said Jenkins could have played Thursday if necessary.
"We'll have shootaround [Friday] and go and look and see how he's feeling, and if he's better than he was [Thursday]," Stallings said.
Vanderbilt's stringent man-to-man defense rarely permitted LSU clean looks at the basket. Stallings sent a series of defenders at SEC all-freshman guard Ralston Turner, nearly all of whom had a size advantage on him. Turner was 0-for-12, the first scoreless game for LSU's leading scorer.
Vanderbilt forward Jeffery Taylor, an SEC all-defensive team member who took turns on Turner, said his objective was "just try to stay in front of him, contest his shots, just make it difficult for him to even get the ball."
Vanderbilt's defense and a whopping 48-32 rebounding edge compensated for a fairly horrid night of offense. The Commodores, second in the SEC in 3-point field goal percentage, made three of 22 3-point attempts, a season-worst 13.6 percent. Overall, they shot 36.4 percent from the field.
Starting three freshmen and two juniors, LSU did not go quietly. Down 54-36 with 10:27 to play, the Tigers cut the lead to eight with 4:03 to play on a Chris Bass layup. However, that was the last time they scored. Following the Bass basket that made the score 58-50 in Vanderbilt's favor, the Commodores forced eight errant LSU shots to secure the victory.
Vanderbilt improves to 22-9. LSU's season ends at 11-21. After leading the Tigers to a 27-8 record and first place in the West division in his first season, Johnson is 22-41 in the past two years. After opening the SEC regular season with two wins, the Tigers dropped 14 of their last 15 games.
"Losing's a bad habit and it's something that I can't deal with very well," Johnson said. "I haven't dealt with it and I'm going to make sure that they don't get accustomed to dealing with it."
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