McNeese’s Shumate gets a double-double in 85-46 loss at LSU

BATON ROUGE – LSU used a 19-0 first half run to open up a tight, 15-10 lead over McNeese, and never looked back as the Tigers cruised to an 85-46 win over the Cowboys Thursday night in the Peter Maravich Assembly Center.

LSU (4-0) forced McNeese into a season-high 27 turnovers while scoring 33 points off those miscues. The Cowboys shot just 29 percent from the field (17 of 59) and 15 percent from three-point range (4 for 27).

Freshman Christian Shumate was a bright spot for the Cowboys, recording his first-career double-double with team highs in both points (12) and rebounds (15).

“He did a great job for us tonight,” said head coach John Aiken. “He’s young and still learning but this was a good game for him.

“We weren’t ready tonight. We didn’t have a good shoot-around this morning and from the start we just weren’t ready. That’s my fault. But we’re also not as bad as we played tonight. I told the team we’re not as good as we played on Monday (win over Champion Christian) and we’re not as bad as we were tonight. We’re somewhere in between. But we’ll get it corrected. We play at a tournament next week that I think we can win.”

Tari Eason led the Tigers with 19 points while Darius Days scored 14 and Eric Gaines 10 for LSU. Shumate was the only double-digit scorer for the Cowboys. Myles Lewis added seven points with two assists while Harwin Francois and TJ Moss each scored six.

McNeese trailed 43-16 at the half as LSU outscored the Cowboys 28-6 since the game was just 15-10 at the 9:46 mark.

The Cowboys improved their shooting percentage by 20 points in the second half from the first (39 percent, 11 of 28) and was only out-rebounded by a 50-44 margin. Another bright spot was 18 offensive rebounds.

LSU scored the first four points of the game before Francois drained a three-pointer to get the Cowboys on the board at the 16:19 mark of the first half.

McNeese fell behind 15-5 but scored five straight to pull to within 15-10 and had opportunities to get closer with LSU going scoreless for nearly four minutes. But the Cowboys were on a drought as well, making just 1 of 10 shots before LSU got hot, scoring eight straight over a span of 1:06 to open up a 23-10 lead with 7:47 to play in the half.

LSU extended that run to 19-0 and building a 34-10 lead with 3:49 to play as Eason threw down a statement dunk to for the final score of the run.

McNeese snapped a 1 for 17 shooting slump with a three-pointer by Moss and a trey from Francois to cut the gap to 34-16 at the 2:31 mark. LSU scored nine straight to end the half off a Days layup and three-pointer, a Brandon Murray alley-oop and an Eason layup.

The Cowboys turned the ball over 15 times in the half, 10 of those coming in the first eight minutes of the game as the Tigers scored 22 points off of them.

McNeese played better in the second half, shooting 10 points better from the field

NEXT UP:
McNeese will return home Monday night when it hosts Carver College at 6:30 at Burton Coliseum. After that, the Cowboys will take a Thanksgiving trip to Destin, Florida for bracket play in the Emerald Coast Classic. The Cowboys will play St. Francis-Brooklyn at 1:30 on Friday then will play either Samford or North Carolina A&T on Saturday.