LSU basketball coach Will Wade said he rarely evokes the phrase “big game” when speaking to his team about the opponent they’re about to play.

“I'd maybe used it one other time this year,” Wade said.

But with the Tigers desperately trying to string together consecutive wins for the first time since the second week of January and with NCAA tournament bid day four weeks away, Wade wasn’t holding his tongue before Saturday’s home game against Mississippi State.

“When I pull it (big game) out,” Wade said, “they (his team) know what’s at stake. They were pretty aware of how I felt.”

LSU dug deep vs. one of the SEC’s most physical teams, overcoming frigid starts in both halves for a 69-65 victory over the gritty Bulldogs before a Pete Maravich Assembly Center crowd of 10,975.

The Tigers (18-7, 6-6 SEC) pulled into a three-way tie for fifth place in the league with Alabama and Florida with Mississippi State (14-10, 5-6) falling to eighth place. LSU has six regular season games left – three at home including Georgia on Wednesday and three away.

Despite blowing its 15-point halftime lead in Saturday’s win, LSU played with the required desperation and perspiration of a team battling back from a stretch where it lost six of seven games while starting senior point guard Xavier Pinson mended a sprained knee.

It was Missouri transfer Pinson and Cincinnati transfer Tari Eason who lit the fuse in the second half vs. the Bulldogs on a 14-2 run that took the Tigers from a 48-45 deficit with 9:18 left to a 59-50 lead with 4:22 remaining. Pinson scored the first four points, assisted Eason on a 3-pointer and later drew two defenders and found senior Darius Days for a huge 3-point pick and pop for a 9-point lead with 1:32 left.

“With a healthy roster, we feel like we can compete with anybody and beat anybody,” said Pinson, who had 12 points, 4 assists and 3 steals. “With a full roster, I feel like we’re top tier.”

Nobody is happier to have Pinson back as a starter than Eason, who is back to coming off the bench as a small forward instead of starting as power forward when Wade had to shuffle the lineup because of Pinson’s injury.

Eason scored 13 of his 23 points vs. the Bulldogs in the second half. He also collected 6 rebounds, had 2 steals and blocked 2 shots in a performance inspired by the fact LSU had lost two of its last three home games.

“I told the guys I’m not leaving this gym without a win,” said Eason, who hit a season-high 3 3-pointers. “It’s a sigh of relief to put two wins together to get the monkey off our back a bit.”

The game was a picture of evenly matched teams relying on defense and rebounding to overcome erratic, streaky shooting. LSU shot 41.5 percent (22 of 53) from the field, Mississippi State 39.6 percent (21 of 53).

Though the Bulldogs won the rebounding battle 37-31, State got just 11 offensive boards. It was a far cry from the 22 that Texas A&M plucked in its Tuesday night home 76-68 loss to the Tigers.

Another area of slight improvement for LSU was it had 14 turnovers, which is under its average in SEC play. For a span of 11:14 including the last 9:12 of the first half when the Tigers took 37-22 halftime lead, LSU didn’t commit a turnover.

But when LSU began its second half implosion, it had a stretch where it had five turnovers and missed 10 of 11 shots including 0-of-9 3-pointers. State’s 24-8 run in the first 10:42 of the second half was boosted by 16 points in the paint, sparked by drives by Bulldogs’ guard Iverson Molinar who finished with a game-high 26 points.

Yet spurred by Pinson, Eason and reserve Shareef O’Neal who came off the bench to score 8 points, LSU rallied back.

“We finally stopped shooting a bunch of jump shots and drove the ball,” Wade said. “We found a couple of sets that worked, we had them (State) confused a little bit and Pinson really led us there.”

State coach Ben Howland pointed to his team’s missed free throws and its turnovers on why his team couldn’t get its first road win of the year.

“Iverson was 10-for-10 (in free throws) but the rest of the team was 10-for-18,” Howland said. “We had a key spot there where we’re down one and we missed two free throws in-a-row. They scored 20 points off our (18) turnovers and that’s really the biggest difference in the game.”