LSU basketball survived a late second half push from Georgia to win its eighth straight game and remain undefeated in SEC play, knocking off the visiting Bulldogs 92-82.

The Tigers allowed 44 points in the paint with 28 of those coming in the second half. Coach Will Wade was quite frank about the team’s second half performance, saying that he “saw this coming from a mile away.”

“We didn’t play very well tonight and we have a lot of things we have to get better at,” Wade said. “It was not to our standard at all. Our transition defense was horrible and our post defense was even worse. We were exposed a little bit tonight in some areas where we weren’t efficient.”

Wade said the overall defense looked like it did at the beginning of the year where LSU was having to rely on its offense to get them out of bad defensive possessions.

“Our communication was bad, we were a step slow, we got beat on back doors, our foot angle was bad on the perimeter, our post guys were being put in the basket and we were chasing too much,” Wade said. “Besides that we were alright.”

It was another balanced offensive attack for LSU with four players scoring in double figures, led by sophomore point guard Tremont Waters with 26 points and four steals along with Skylar Mays who poured in 20 more. The eight turnovers committed by LSU was the second fewest of the season with the season-low seven coming against Louisiana Tech.

Mays took a rough elbow to the face in the first half and was forced to miss about five minutes of the first half before checking back in. The shot to the head seemed to wake Mays up as he scored 14 points in the first half including a stretch where he scored eight of 10 points to answer a Georgia run that cut the lead to five.

“I was taking shots I’m comfortable with and that’s part of my game,” Mays said. “I have great teammates who were giving me good looks and I was able to knock them down tonight.”

The first half didn’t start exactly how LSU wanted it with two Georgia bigs knocking down back-to-back 3-pointers to take an 8-2 advantage early. The Tigers responded in a big way with a 14-0 run capped off by a successful alley oop from Waters to junior transfer Marlon Taylor.

The pass was a little late reaching Taylor but his athleticism allowed him to almost sit in the air, wait for the ball to get to him and throw it down. Georgia made little spurts of its own but was never able to really dig into the Tiger lead with LSU carrying a 38-26 advantage at halftime.

LSU was sitting pretty in the second half, extending a 12-point halftime lead to 17-points in the first six minutes but Georgia started to dominate the paint.

The teams traded baskets for a stretch but soon those 28 second chance points caught up to the Tigers as the Bulldogs cut the lead to seven with 4:08 to go.

With the lead down to single digits and in need of a couple of scoring possessions, LSU was finally able to get the ball in the paint to senior big man Kavell Bigby-Williams, who finished off a perfectly placed pass from Waters to extend the Tiger lead to 10 after drawing a foul.

On the ensuing possession, Waters converted a three point play of his own to keep the lead at double digits and putting the game away with 2:13 to go.

“I feel like every kid dreams of the day where their team and coaching staff has that amount of faith in them,” Waters said. “I just have to live up to the moment and do what I do.”