Maten’s shot with 5 seconds left lifts UGA to win
BATON ROUGE, La. — Yante Maten’s field goal in the lane with five seconds remaining gave Georgia a 61-60 Southeastern Conference victory against LSU on Tuesday night.
The Tigers (11-6, 2-3) pulled ahead 60-59 on a basket by Duop Reath with 39 seconds left, and the game-winning field goal followed an offensive rebound by Juwan Parker with 23 seconds to play.
LSU’s Tremont Waters missed an off-balance 3-point shot with two seconds remaining.
“I was supposed to set a screen and pop on the last play,” Maten said. “They were overplaying that a little bit, so I went back down inside and Turtle (Jackson) did a good job finding me.
The two baskets I made at the end of the first half helped establish myself.”
Maten was held scoreless for the first 17 minutes of the game, but finished with a game-high 21 points. Maten scored 17 of Georgia’s 37 second-half points, and grabbed 12 rebounds. Derek Ogbeide added 11 points for the Bulldogs (12-5, 3-3).
Brandon Sampson led the Tigers with 17 points. Reath added 12 points and Skylar Mays had 11. Waters, who was averaging 16 points a game, was held to six points.
“It’s just a tale of two halves,” LSU coach Will Wade said. “We controlled the pace in the first half. In the second half, they controlled things. They got the ball to Maten, their best player. They just beat us up in the paint and beat us up on the glass.”
Georgia, which trailed 34-24 at halftime, scored the first eight points of the second half. Maten made two field goals in that stretch. The lead exchanged hands seven times in the last five minutes, and neither team had more than a two-point advantage during that time.
“It was a hard-fought game against a very good LSU team that is underappreciated,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “We were a little disorganized in the first half. In the second half, we just tried to get a little more organized and obviously, we rebounded the ball better.”
Big picture
Georgia: The Bulldogs got a muchneeded road victory after losing at home to South Carolina last Saturday. Georgia, which had lost SEC games at Kentucky and Missouri, snapped a two-game losing streak.
LSU: The Tigers have dropped all three of their SEC home games. LSU had been beaten at home by Kentucky and Alabama. The Tigers have dropped back-to-back games for the first time since November.
Top player delivers
Yante Maten bounced back from a slow start to carry Georgia to its come-from-behind victory against LSU. Maten missed his first six field-goal attempts as the Bulldogs
fell behind 32-20 with four minutes remaining in the first half. However, Maten made a couple of baskets in the last 2½ minutes before halftime.
In the second half, Maten made five field goals and sank all seven of his field goals.
He added 12 rebounds and recorded his eighth double-double of the season.
Rebounding problems
Georgia outrebounded the Tigers 38-27, and LSU was beaten by at least ten rebounds in the second consecutive game. The Bulldogs had 13 offensive rebounds which resulted in 17 secondchance points.
LSU was outrebounded 40-24 in its 74-66 defeat against Alabama last Saturday.
Up next
Georgia will attempt to go above .500 in the SEC when it plays at No. 17 Auburn on Saturday.
LSU will go for its third straight road SEC victory when it travels to Vanderbilt on Saturday.