LSU Survives Alabama in Overtime

The LSU men’s basketball team (21-10, 9-9) closed out the regular season the right way surviving a wild Senior Day game against Alabama 80-77 in overtime.

In his last game ever inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, Darius Days was the star going for 24 points, 7 rebounds, and 3 steals; Tari Eason, meanwhile, showed why he’ll likely go in the first round of this upcoming NBA Draft with 20 points, 9 boards, 3 steals, and a game-changing block in overtime.

Alabama came into Saturday as one of the best three-point shooting teams in the conference and today, fortunately, the shots wouldn’t fall. The Tide shot 11-40 (27.5 percent) from three and Jaden Shackleford, the SEC’s leader in made threes, was 0-8.

But Alabama had a chance to take the lead with eight seconds remaining in overtime down 78-77 until JD Davidson inexplicably let the shotclock expire and thus turned the ball over to LSU. Eric Gaines was fouled and hit a pair of free throws and the Tide, of course, missed their 29th and final three point attempt of the game.

While Alabama tried making it rain from three, LSU countered by going at the Tide in the interior and had 36 points in the paint. LSU also forced 21 turnovers and cashed in 23 points off of them.

Now that the regular season has come to a close the attention shifts toward postseason play beginning with the SEC Tournament in Tampa. At the time of this writing LSU is the 8-seed and will play whoever wins tonight’s Mississippi State-Texas A&M game (7:30 P.M., SEC Network) in the second round of the tournament. That game will be played on Thursday, March 10 at 11 A.M. CT with the winner advancing to play Auburn in the quarterfinals.