Phil Pressey scored 25 for Mizzou, Jabari Brown added 19 points and Laurence Bowers had 10, in his first time action in three weeks because of a knee injury as the Tigers remain winless on the road, losing 73-70 to the LSU Tigers on Wednesday night.
The telling stat for me is only seven assists in the game, five coming from Pressey. In the win over Vandy on Saturday, the Tigers were moving the ball, touching hands, going inside and out…in another road loss, it looked liked they settled on too many long shots.
Pressey and Brown combined for 14 of 44 shot attempts. Mizzou failed to go inside as Bowers and Alex Oriakhi combined to go just 4 of 11 from the field with Oriakhi only getting two attempts.
Anthony Hickey scored 20 points for LSU, and Andre Stringer added 18. Hickey had 14 points in the second half and Stringer converted a key four-point play late in the game after a Pressey basket made it 61-58 with 3:35 to play.
LSU is a team that fights. In four of their losses this season, they had chances to win in the five minutes. This game, they were fighting to not blow a lead. Mizzou was down by as many as 16 at one point in the second half, but battled back to make it close, but Frank Haith was not happy with shot selection down the stretch.
“We were driving the ball at the end of the game and we needed to keep driving the ball. We settled for some bad shots and we had some bad turnovers. We are trying to win a game. You can’t make those kinds of plays when you are trying to win a game.”
The Tigers dug themselves a hole in the first half, shooting just 27% in the opening 20 minutes. LSU used an 11-0 run early and another 10-2 run later in the first half to grab control. Mizzou trailed by double figures for nearly the rest of the half. LSU took a 39-26 halftime lead on a basket by Hickey.
