Coming up short at the end of a game is never a good feeling.
South Carolina (10-9, 1-6 SEC) traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to challenge the Tigers (16-4, 5-2 SEC) in order to try and raise the bar on their SEC standings.
The momentum of the Gamecocks was not enough, however, to surpass that of the Tigers who won 64-58.
With the recent loss of 58-43 to No. 1 standing Kentucky, South Carolina was looking to find a little bit of magic against LSU.
LSU entered this game against South Carolina after a recent tight victory against Vanderbilt 79-75 in overtime. Winning in an overtime game on the road does nothing but fuel the fire needed to beat someone on your own home court, and in the end this fuel was exactly what the Tigers needed.
Both teams were ready to play because of the winning streak of two games LSU has on South Carolina, and in their most recent match up last season LSU took the win 71-68.
Although the Gamecocks have the upper hand on the Tigers with the record of 15-14 in their meetings, South Carolina has only won four out of seven of the games played in Baton Rouge.
It was a close game from the beginning but it was LSU leading 29-28 at the end of the first half, and at the beginning of the second both teams continued to fight for the lead till the end with them scoring an additional 35 points in the second half compared to South Carolina’s 30 points.
The Gamecock’s sophomore guard Duane Notice showed a lot of dedication along with sophomore guard Sindarius Thornwell scoring 12 and 11 points, respectively. Two more exceeding players included senior guard Tyrone Johnson and junior forward Michael Carrera scoring 10 and nine points, respectively.
For the Tigers sophomore guard Tim Quarterman showed a lot of promise with his 16 points of the game followed by junior guard Keith Hornsby and sophomore forward Jordan Mickey scoring 15 and 14 points, respectively.
South Carolina only scored 21 out of its 61 field goal attempts compared to LSU scoring 22 out of its 48 field goals attempts.
Also the Tigers had the Gamecocks beat on their free throws with scoring 15 out of 19 attempts compared to 9 out of 15 attempts, respectively.
On the other hand South Carolina had LSU beat on rebounds with a total of 42 compared to 34, respectively.
The Tigers came up with the most momentum in the end scrambling up six points ahead of the Gamecocks attaining from rebounds and foul shots.
South Carolina will return home adding another loss to their season against a major SEC school. The Gamecocks take on Georgia at home later this week.