The men's basketball team secured its second straight double-digit comeback victory on the road against LSU Saturday 60-51, overcoming a second-half deficit of 15 points.
"It's almost Groundhog Day for this team," said head coach Tony Barbee. "I tried to play mind games with them before the game and said the first half is the second half. We came out tentative. The second half, we did what we needed to do. We were aggressive and turned the heat up and took advantage of it."
Junior forward Kenny Gabriel and sophomore guard Earnest Ross each had double-doubles, with Gabriel recording 16 points and 11 rebounds and Ross scoring 16 points and 10 rebounds.
"The first half, we got behind, but in the second half, we picked it up on the defensive end and started to make shots and free throws," Gabriel said.
LSU opened the second half strong, scoring 11 points and holding Auburn without a field goal for 6:13 to take its largest lead of the game at 40-25.
Auburn rallied with a 23-4 run in nine minutes and took the lead at the 5:51 mark, its first lead since 3-2.
"We just know that the last couple games we've been coming out of the second half really hard, and that's what coach tried to get us to do in the first half, but as you can tell we didn't," Gabriel said. "We had a little run at the end of the first half, and then we fed off of it and kept it going in the second half."
Auburn is set to play in the SEC tournament Thursday at noon in Atlanta's Georgia Dome. The Tigers' opponent won't be determined until the result of the Tennessee-Kentucky matchup Sunday.
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