Louisiana finishes 2nd in Classics tournament.

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BATON ROUGE - For 30 minutes of Sunday's contest, Louisiana's Ragin'
Cajuns men's basketball team had LSU walking a tight rope with the outcome in limbo.

Thanks to a Brandon Bass and Antonio Hudson who combined for 52 points the Tigers were able to come away with an 83-69 victory here in the championship game of the 2004 LSU Louisiana Classic at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

Bass scored a game-high 30 points on 11-of-12 shooting. It seemed every time the Cajuns worked their way back into the contest Bass was there to bail the Tigers out.

Louisiana (1-1) trailed by as many as 12 points in the second stanza after a Darrell Mitchell layup gave LSU a 52-40 lead with 16:41 left to play.

The Ragin' Cajuns then used a 15-4 run capped off by a Tiras Wade three-point bucket that trimmed the Tigers lead to 56-55 with 12:14 left to play

Bass responded for the Tigers on the next possession getting an inside basket to put LSU up 58-55.

The Cajuns then went scoreless over the next three minutes as LSU began to stretch its lead.

Antonio Hudson, who finished with 22 points and converted 6-of-6 three-point field goals, nailed two crucial triples over the next minute to give the Tigers a double-digit lead it would not relinquish.

Leading 62-55, Hudson hit a three-pointer that put the Tigers up by 10 points with nine minutes remaining. The Cajuns closed within eight points as Wade answered with a 15-foot jumper.

After a turnover by LSU's Xaiver Whipple provided the Cajuns with a shot to close any further, Wade misfired on a jumper and Hudson connected from long range on the other end to extend the Tigers lead to 68-57 with just under eight minutes left to play.

On the Cajuns next possession Darrell Mitchell made the first of his two critical steals in the final minutes when he stole the ball from UL's Dwayne Mitchell and raced in for a layup giving LSU a 70-57 lead.

Louisiana worked the Tigers' lead back to 10 points when a pair of freebies by Brian Hamilton closed the gap to 70-60 with 7:07 showing on the scoreboard.

LSU's Ross Neltner blew a layup giving UL Lafayette another possession with a shot to cut the lead to single-digits.

However, Mitchell forced a turnover from Orien Greene in which Mitchell scooped up the ball and raced down the sideline before rifling a pass to Bass for an easy dunk.

The Bass dunk was the first of two points on an 11-0 Tigers' run which stretched the margin to 81-60.

Wade, a junior transfer from East Tennessee State, led
Louisiana in scoring for the second straight game as he notched 22 points - his second straight outing with 20-plus points.

Greene scored 18 points and handed out five helpers while collecting five steals.

One glaring stat that the Cajuns could not be happy with was the squad's assist-to-turnover ratio. UL Lafayette had just seven assists and committed 23 turnovers.

The Cajuns defense forced 21 LSU turnovers, but could only get the Tigers to make three mistakes in the final seven minutes during which the Tigers outscored the Cajuns 25-5.

Louisiana took five leads in the first half, the last coming at 4:26 when Wade made a basket to put the Cajuns up 30-29.

What followed was what turned out to be the initial turning point in the contest.

Ross Neltner's three-point attempt and a foul called were just mere seconds apart. It was ruled the Neltner was in the act of shooting as Spencer Ford was being whistled for a foul on Bass.

Neltner's three was good and Bass followed with a pair of free throws for a five-point swing which gave the Tigers a 34-30 lead. The five-point swing was the difference in a halftime score of 42-37 in favor of the Tigers.

The Cajuns made just one field goal and scored just three points in the first four minutes of the second half as the Tigers used a 10-3 run take a 12-point lead.

Twice the Cajuns will cut the lead to either five points or six and Bass was there with another field goal for the Tigers.

Louisiana finished as the runner-up of the LSU Louisiana Classic with the loss. Both Wade (averaged 21 points) and Greene (averaged 18 points) were named to the All-Tournament team.

The Ragin' Cajuns return to action on Saturday, Nov. 27 in a 1:05 p.m. contest against Rice University. The contest will serve as the 2004-05 regular season home opener.

LOUISIANA SI

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BATON ROUGE — When Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajun basketball team was able to make Sunday’s Louisiana Classic tournament finals an up-tempo contest, they were able to stick with LSU’s host Tigers.

When it became a half-court game, the Cajuns couldn’t do much about Brandon Bass.

The Tiger sophomore only missed one shot all afternoon, going 11-for-12 from the field and 8-for-8 from the free throw line in LSU’s 83-69 victory.

“He is a load,” said UL head coach Robert Lee of Bass, who finished with 30 points on the way to earning Louisiana Classic Most Valuable Player honors. “We knew we would have a difficult time guarding him.

“But we cannot let Antonio Hudson do what he did.”

Hudson hit all six of his three-point shots on the way to 22 points, four of them in the second half when the Cajuns ran out of gas after a back-and-forth first 30 minutes.

“Once you let someone like that start hitting shots, he’s going to keep knocking them down,” said Cajun guard Orien Greene, who had 11 first-half points but struggled from the floor in the final half. “But the difference was our offense. We had 23 turnovers and only seven assists ... Coach told us we rushed things way too much.”

The Cajuns had the running game working midway through the first half, getting three straight three-pointers in transition from three different players to wipe out an early seven-point Tiger lead.

Almost immediately after, Greene and Tirus Wade hit back-to-back driving layups that gave UL a 27-24 advantage.

“We weren’t able to get them in the half-court much in the first half,” said Tiger head coach John Brady. “They (UL) thrive on you turning the ball over where they can get layups. They thrive on second-chance points.”

The Cajuns did that for most of the first half, before the Tigers pulled off a five-point play 4:07 before intermission that wiped out a 30-29 Cajun advantage and gave LSU the lead for good. A three-pointer by Ross Neltner and both ends of a one-and-one by Bass on a foul away from the ball appeared to take the wind out of the visitors and open an 11-2 Tiger run.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@lafayette.gannett.com