BATON ROUGE, LA — Nobody in the Southeastern Conference has had an answer for Marcus Thornton, who added Florida’s scalp to his bulging belt Tuesday night. Thornton, who has scored 107 points in the last four games, was good for 32 against the Gators, clinching no worse than a tie for the Southeastern Conference championship for the LSU Tigers, who won their 12th straight SEC game.
LSU improved to 12-1 in the SEC. Any combination of one LSU win or one loss each by Kentucky or South Carolina will give Coach Trent Johnson an SEC championship in his first year on the job. The 18th-ranked Tigers are now 24-4 overall with games remaining against Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Auburn.
Florida, 21-7 overall and 8-5 in the SEC East, fell a half game behind Kentucky and South Carolina, who play in Columbia Wednesday night. The Gators will return home to play Tennessee at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center Sunday afternoon.
Thornton, averaging 20.5 points per game entering the contest, burned the Gators from the three-point line in the first half and from the foul line in the second. He scored 15 first half points, hitting 5-6 from the three-point line. He hit only one more three in the second half, but he went 10-11 from the foul line including 10 in a row at the end of the game.
The Gators held a 41-37 lead at halftime but a 9-0 run midway through the second half gave the Tigers control of the game. After Florida tied the game at 58-58 on an Alex Tyus layup, Tasmin Mitchell gave the Tigers the lead for good with a pair of free throws with 10:18 remaining in the game. Garrett Temple followed that with a three-ball and Mitchell got a layup when he outran the Gators in transition to make it 65-57 with 9:09 remaining. Thornton extended the lead to nine when he hit the last two of three free throws with 8:01 left.
Florida fought back within three (67-64) on a three-point play the old-fashioned way by Ray Shipman and a long bomb from beyond the arc by Erving Walker with 4:45 left in the game, but LSU countered with four straight points, stretching the lead to 71-64 on Chris Johnson’s runner in the lane with 3:54 left.
Florida got back within four two more times on a Walter Hodge three from the corner and a Tyus layup with 1:29, but LSU got a critical runner from Bo Spencer with 55.6 seconds left as the shot clock wound down and perfect free throw shooting the rest of the way to close the game out.
The Gators had their chances to fold in the first half when Thornton couldn’t miss. LSU led by as many as eight points but Florida wouldn’t go away. When Thornton hit his fifth straight with 4:44 remaining to give the Tigers a 35-29 lead, the Gators looked like a tired team, but they re-energized behind Nick Calathes, who led a 12-2 run over the final 4:18 to put the Gators up 41-37 at the half.
Thornton wasn’t the only Tiger with a hot hand. Senior Garrett Temple, known more for his defense than his shooting, hit 3-4 from beyond the arc and finished the game with 21 points. Mitchell, who was the focus of Florida’s interior defense, was held to 12 points but on this night, it was LSU’s hot shooting from the outside and free throw shooting that made the difference.
LSU hit 9-21 on three-pointers and 18-21 from the foul line.
The Gators only got to the foul line for 11 shots the entire night, knocking down seven. Florida hit 10-27 on three-pointers.
Hodge led a balanced Florida scoring attack with 16 points while Tyus has 15. Calathes and Chandler Parsons scored 12 points each. Calathes also had seven rebounds and six assists.
The Gators shot 43.3 percent from the field (29-67) and surprisingly held their own on the boards. LSU, the league’s top rebounding team, managed only a 32-30 advantage.