If the LSU basketball team was a horse and point guard Eric Gaines was its jockey, then just imagine Gaines getting his team across the finish line practically hanging by his legs upside down Wednesday night.
It was one helluva wild stretch ride for Gaines and company as the 12th ranked Tigers held off Florida 64-58 in the Gators’ O-Dome for LSU’s first win in Gainesville after four straight losses.
Playing without injured starting point guard Xavier Pinson and with leading scorer Tari Eason fouling out early in the second half, LSU overcame 21 fouls and 16 turnovers including 11 in the second half before playing an almost flawless final six minutes to improve to 15-1 overall and 3-1 in the SEC.
“When six minutes hits, it’s time to lock in,” said Gaines, who had six points, two rebounds and an assist in the final six minutes after he missed four shots and committed two turnovers in a previous 10½-minute stretch when a 20-8 Florida run cut the Tigers’ lead to 54-53 with 6:04 left. “We preach six-minute games every day in practice. Protect the ball, make free throws and be solid on defense.”
The final six minutes linescore:
LSU: 10 points on 4 of 6 field goals, 2 of 3 free throws, 5 rebounds and 1 turnover.
Florida: 5 points on 2 of 9 field goals, 1 of 4 free throws, 7 rebounds and 2 turnovers.
“The tougher the circumstance, the better we are,” LSU coach Will Wade said. “It doesn’t get much tougher than that, on the road without two of our three leading scorers in a hostile environment, a place we've played terribly at for a long time.
“We just dug it out. It wasn't pretty, but it’s not going to be pretty with this group. We're fighters, man, fighters. That's what that's what we do and that's what our program is about.”
Even without Eason and starting center Efton Reid, who played just seven and 13 minutes respectively before both fouled out (Eason with 14:07 left, Reid with 7:16 left), LSU survived because of an unlikely hero playing in his first game since early last February.
Junior Shareef O’Neal, a UCLA transfer who played in just 10 games in 2020-21 with the Tigers before a recurring foot injury shut him down for the rest of the season, was huge vs. the Gators in his 2021-22 debut.
The 6-10 son of LSU basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, finally given the green light by team doctors and trainers after overcoming some preseason and early season foot complications, scored four points on 2-of-2 shooting and grabbed four rebounds.
He also was a defensive lifesaver as LSU’s lone experienced big man available to battle 6-11 Florida junior forward Colin Castleton. O’Neal, with help from teammates in LSU’s switching swarming man-to-man defense, made Castleton earn all his 19 points and 9 rebounds.
Thanks to LSU senior forward Darius Days, who scored 12 of his game-high 20 points in the first half, the Tigers came flying out of the starting gate.
Days, who played his prep ball at Gainesville The Rock, about six miles west of the O'Dome before transferring to Bradenton (Fla.) IMG Academy, scored 9 of LSU’s first 12 points. Coupled with the Tigers’ smothering nation’s leading defense, LSU led by as many as 14 points at 30-16 with 5:55 left in the first half.
Twenty-four seconds later, Eason picked up his third foul and had to go to the bench. Just more than a minute late, Reid followed suit with a third foul and a benching.
LSU’s offense went stagnant, Florida finished the half with a 14-8 run and renewed confidence trailing 38-30 at halftime.
The Tigers extended the lead to 44-30 with a 6-0 burst to open the second half. But Eason and Reid quickly got their fourth fouls and from that point LSU was trying to piecemeal a survival lineup.
“We didn't have our normal lineups in there, we had lineups in there we've never practiced with,” Wade said. “Our guys just found a way.”
LSU, which shot 50 percent from the field including 55 percent the second half, held Florida to 36.4 percent for the game (32.3 in the second half).
“Offense doesn’t always translate to road games,” Days said, “but our defense translated to Florida. We got stops when we needed them.”
Meanwhile, Florida coach and New Orleans native Mike White, whose 9-6 team is off to its first 0-3 SEC start since 1981, bemoaned his team’s chilly 11 of 22 free throw clanking.
“The thing is, you're talking about good shooters here,” White said. "It's obviously mental. We've got to get mentally tougher. There's not 10 minutes that go by in practice without us stopping and doing a free throw drill."
The Tigers return home Saturday for a 1 p.m. date with Arkansas, coached by former LSU assistant Eric Musselman.
The Razorbacks, 11-5 overall and 1-3 in the SEC, got their first league win on Wednesday with an 87-43 home blowout of Missouri. Arkansas started the season 9-0 and was ranked as high as No. 10 in the Coaches poll and No. 12 in the AP before losing consecutive December games to Oklahoma and Hofstra.
Wade said the Tigers may have Pinson, who sprained his knee in last Saturday’s win over Tennessee, available to face the Razorbacks. If not, Wade expects his team not to blink.
“We got good stuff to us,” he said. “We got good DNA. We're built on a rock-solid foundation. This is not some fluke or flimsy stuff. No one bad thing is gonna blow our house down. We got solid kids, we got unbelievable culture, unbelievable connectedness and togetherness within our team.”
