Tigers {0-1) lost a heartbreaker to UMass (2-0) 92-90. UMass was coming off a 13-pt win over Boston College. JOB lead the Tigers with 23 pts. Poor free throw shooting by LSU (60%) was the difference. Tigers were down by 8 with 1:25 left in the game but ran out of time.
That was a poorly officaited game. Way too many fouls were called, and some blatant no calls hurt us. Jarrell Martin lasted one minute before spraining his ankle. He may have made a difference in this one. There was a lot of positive. We played well with multiple personnel sets. We went big, we went slow, we played a lot of guys, and most everyone contributed. This team looked good at times, U Mass just seemed a bit better prepared, and the refs certainly fabored them.
34 fouls called in the first half alone. I didn't watch every minute of the game but from what I did see a lot of those fouls are coming from the new contact rule. It's appears there's going to be a long period of adjustment.
They seemed to ease up a bit in the second half, but not by much. In several instances they called the fouls before the contact actually happened. JOB picked up his fourth on phantom contact, and that affected the outcome.
ESPN called and said the game needed to move along quicker. There was a noticeable difference in the 2nd...I attributed that to the teams making adjustments but it very well could have been both.
