ESPN Men's Basketball

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- LSU's Brandon Bass couldn't have picked a better day for his first double-double of the season.

Behind Bass' 22-points and career-high 14 rebounds, the Tigers defeated Northwestern State 83-74 Saturday night.

"We struggled at times and need to work those things out in practice, especially defensively. Offensively, we did pretty well. I thought I could score really whenever I wanted," Bass said. "They really could not stop us inside."

With the win, the Tigers (4-1) extended their winning streak over Louisiana schools to 51 games. The last time LSU lost to an in-state school in the Maravich Center was in 1988 when Louisiana Tech beat LSU 111-109.

Darrel Mitchell opened the game for LSU with a 3-pointer -- the fifth straight game LSU opened its scoring on a 3-pointer by Mitchell.

Trailing 57-47 with 13:48 left, the Demons (5-3) cut the LSU lead to 64-62 over the next six minutes. But an 11-2 run by LSU pushed the lead back to 74-64.

Mitchell scored 20 points, Antonio Hudson and Tac Minor each had 12 and Glen Davis added 10 for the Tigers.

Northwestern State was led by Jermaine Wallace's 19 points and Jermaine Spencer added 14 points.

Over the first 10 minutes, LSU never led by more than five points. A Wallace 3-pointer with 6:35 left in the first half gave the Demons their first lead of the game, 26-25.

A 3-pointer at the buzzer by Hudson gave the Tigers a 42-34 halftime lead.

"We struggled a little bit with the odd-man front zone again but did some things against it that got us more down on the baseline where we could operate against it a little bit better," said LSU head coach John Brady.

Making more free throws (30) than the Demons attempted, Brady was satisfied with his team's ability to get easy points.

"We got to the foul line 40 times," Brady said. "That means we're either driving the ball to the goal pretty well against whatever defense they ran and getting fouled or throwing the ball to your post men and getting fouled."