Cats romp LSU in the Bayou

BATON ROUGE – Jet lag may have been the only thing that slowed UK (22-1, 7-1 Southeastern Conference) down on Saturday afternoon.

The Cats used a 41-8 run to close out the first half and put away any chance for a Louisiana State (9-14, 0-9 SEC) upset. The Cats were paced by freshman forward DeMarcus Cousins yet again, and a meager shooting day by LSU erased any thoughts of a comeback, as UK cruised to an 81-55 romp over the Tigers.

“There was a lot of good stuff,” said UK head coach John Calipari in reference to the Cats’ big first half run. “There was a lot of post-up basketball, we made plays.”

UK trailed LSU 6-1 at the first TV timeout with 15:42 remaining in the first half. The Cats missed their first six shots of the game, but LSU couldn’t stretch the lead to more than five and the highlights ended there for the Bayou Bengals.

The Cats took the lead for good on a free throw by John Wall at the 12:24 mark in the first half. Then, with the score 14-10 in favor of UK, the Cats went on a 20-0 run to push the lead to 34-10.

“It feels great,” Patterson said. “Pretty much, it’s just fun. Everybody was having a lot of fun out there. And we were hoping that we could keep extending the lead, keep playing tough defense and capitalizing on offense.”

Calipari said he wasn’t really confident prior to the game that his young team would be able to look past LSU’s 0-8 record in conference. Calipari said he thought LSU senior forward Tasmin Mitchell could go off on UK ala Devan Downey from South Carolina.

The Tigers started the game hitting their first two shots, a jumper by Bo Spencer from the baseline, and a 3-pointer from star senior forward Tasmin Mitchell, but went just 4-of-30 the rest of the half.

LSU head coach Trent Johnson attributed the run not to a lack of effort by his team, but to size of the Cats.

“It was pure physicality, strength and being better players,” Johnson said.

As has been the case for each of the last six games, Cousins imposed his dominance on the opposing team in limited minutes. In 11 minutes of play in the first half Cousins scored 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Over the last five games Cousins has averaged 11.8 points and 7.6 rebounds in the first half alone.

One thing that did bother Calipari during the game was when the officials reviewed a foul issued to Cousins.

“He gets absolutely whacked, racked, pushed, shoved, and then what he does they go and look at the monitor, and that’s my thing,” Calipari said. “If you want to look at the monitor, you’ve got to protect him. Just call every foul. You can’t let him get grabbed, pushed, shoved and then expect no kind of response.”

Cousins said he was just going to keep playing through the hits, and his double-doubles are a product of him simply playing the game and not trying to do too much. Cousins finished with 19 points and 13 rebounds in 20 total minutes. It was Cousins’ sixth straight double-double. He’s the first Cat to achieve that feat since Chris Mills in 1989.

“Every time I came down the court I get elbowed in the jaw,” Cousins said. “I mean, it’s not even looked at, it’s not even called. So, I mean, I think it’s completely unfair.”

The Cats played a methodical second half, never letting the Tigers within 21 points, and getting minutes from many different players including six from Louisiana-native Perry Stevenson.

“There’s a lot of happy guys in there,” said Calipari pointing to the locker room. “I mean, it’s a road win. Anytime you win on the road.

“I don’t care anybody’s record. Winning on the road is difficult. It’s difficult. It’s hard.”