LSU led Arkansas 40-31 at the half... Shaq was on fire. Then the 2nd half...

[jbcarol]

https://twitter.com/LSUBeatTweet/status/830624702917902337

BATON ROUGE — LSU seemed to be living right Saturday night. Then it died.

The Tigers took a 14-point lead in the first half over Arkansas with a 16-3 run and led by nine at the break before Shaquille O'Neal nailed a 3-pointer at halftime while being honored along with his LSU teammates from the 1990-91 season for winning the Southeastern Conference championship.

But then everything ended.

Razorbacks woke up in the second half, erased LSU's nine-point lead as O'Neal went to his phone...

https://twitter.com/beall_sid/status/830605456745840640

[jbcarol]

Big first half wasted as LSU falls to Arkansas for 11th straight loss

For 20 minutes Saturday night, the LSU men's basketball team played like the 1991 Southeastern Conference champions whom the program honored at halftime.

In the second half, it was Arkansas that turned back the clock.

Shortly after All-American Shaquille O'Neal grabbed a ball, dribbled from midcourt and coolly sank a 3-pointer from the right wing to cap the 1991 team reunion, Arkansas followed his lead.

"In the first 20 minutes, I thought a lot of good things happened on both ends of the floor — offensively and defensively," LSU coach Johnny Jones said after his team was outscored 47-30 in the second half.

It was the 11th consecutive setback for LSU (9-15, 1-11) and 10th in a row in league play. The loss dropped the Tigers into the SEC cellar after Missouri won its second conference game, against Vanderbilt 72-52, earlier in the day.

[jbcarol]

Ron Higgins: Even Shaq couldn't help Tigers hack free their 11-game losing streak

PMAC scoreboard at halftime Saturday night read LSU 40, Arkansas 31.

Victory finally seemed possible for a team that had last won a few days after the New Year's Eve hangovers faded.

The Tigers even held a 14-point lead with 4:13 left in the opening half, doing things to the Razorbacks that had been done to them for the last month as their season careened to the point of no return.

Perfect defensive rotations created turnovers and points. Fierce rebounding at both ends of the court set the physical agenda of repeatedly digging 50/50 balls from a jumble of tangled arms and clawing hands.

When LSU hoops icon Shaquille O'Neal, in town for a Tigers' 1991 SEC championship team reunion, drained a three at the end of halftime ceremonies, unexpected for someone who made just one three in his 19-year NBA career, it seemed like the planets had aligned for Johnny Jones' beleaguered squad.

Until Arkansas discovered what the rest of the SEC already knows - make the extra pass offensively, then hit open threes to send LSU into an offensive panic dissipating into turnovers and ill-advised shots.

Just like that, the script flipped in what became a 78-70 Razorbacks' victory, an 11th straight loss for LSU in a nightmare season that has about a month remaining.

It's getting harder to judge the devastation level of each loss in a losing streak that is now the fifth longest in school history, three shy of the LSU record 14 consecutive defeats twice set in both 1965-66 and 1966-67.