BATON ROUGE, La. — Antonio Blakeney scored a career-high 31 points Saturday to help the LSU men’s basketball team move into sole possession of first place in the Southeastern Conference with an 88-77 victory against Mississippi State on Saturday night.
Blakeney, a freshman whose previous single-game high was 22 points, hit 11 of 17 shots, including four 3-pointers. It was easily Blakeney’s best outing against a team from a major conference and exactly what LSU (15-8, 8-2) expected when it recruited last season’s Florida high school player of the year.
Keith Hornsby scored 25 points for LSU, while Ben Simmons added 16 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists.
Gavin Ware scored 14 for MSU (9-13, 2-8), which led by as many as 14 points in the first half. But the Bulldogs trailed at halftime and struggled to keep pace after that.
LSU led by as many as 20 in the second half when Blakeney’s jumper, which gave him seven points during a 14-3 Tigers run, made it 67-47 with 11 minutes, 28 seconds to go.
MSU never got closer than 11 points after that and fell for the third time in four games.
Quinndary Weatherspoon, Craig Sword, and Malik Newman each scored 12 for MSU. Fred Thomas added 10.
But LSU shot 65.5 percent (19 of 29) in the second half, making it difficult for MSU to catch up even as it shot 50 percent (16 of 32) in the final 20 minutes.
Sword made a pair of early 3-pointers as MSU opened the game on an 8-0 run. The Bulldogs hit eight of their first 13 shots, including three 3-pointers, while taking its largest lead at 22-8 lead. At that point, LSU had hit only three of its first 11 shots, but began to close the gap when Blakeney made a pair of 3-pointers and Hornsby added another. Simmons’ free throws got the Tigers as close as 25-24 before Weatherspoon’s consecutive 3-pointers helped MSU briefly pull away again.
LSU didn’t take its first lead of the game until Craig Victor turned his steal from Weatherspoon into breakaway layup, putting the Tigers up 34-33 with less than four minutes left in the opening half. LSU outscored MSU 16-2 in the final 5:33 of the half, highlighted by Hornsby’s transition 3-pointer that was set up by Simmons’ hard, no-look pass. Hornsby and Blakeney each had 15 points by halftime, when LSU led 43-35.
Newman, who entered the game with 52 3-pointers this season, missed all four of his attempts from long range. Ware’s point total moved him nine points past Eric Dampier as MSU’s 22nd all-time scorer.
LSU, which has won four straight in the series, improved to 5-0 at home in SEC games. It is 8-1 when shooting better than 50 percent from the field.
Blakeney’s previous single-game scoring high of 22 came twice before against South Alabama and McNeese State in November.
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