Todd Blanchfield bang! 7 3's very nice for a new recruit in a big city desperate for success.

Score was 97-89 and Simmons was every bit as advertised.

Holt controlled the squad reasonably well, 5 TO's were costly and while going 0/5 from deep his stroke is very sound. Plays defence and low maintenance guy so will work alongside Goulding.

Blanchfield is going to another level this year and with penetration of Holt his catch and shoot game is perfect. Still needs to board harder at defensive end. 34pts @ 80%

Ibekwe isn't the answer to United's interior issues of last season and foul prone as we've come to expect. 20 mins, 3rebs and 4 fouls. 10/14ft.

Majok is raw and will be a 10 minute backup at best although that's a concern with Ibekwe's tendency to foul where he's likely to be relied on more than he is currently capable of.

Kickert couple of nice treys but looked slow and complained continually to refs as we saw last year. Is coming off surgery so will give him benefit of the doubt.

Patton has trimmed down a little but only three mins so he's either not in Demopolous plans or something else.

Hadzimerovic got to the rim but just couldn't finish, awkward shooting style where he will struggle to get it off under pressure but capable and will progress.

Demopolous coaching style looks to be a good fit, he was into the game, ran a good variety of sets and his defensive schemes will be a positive for a team that has leaked unnessacary points for years.

Box Score:
http://www.lsusports.net/pdf9/3726106.pdf?ATCLID=210280088&SPSID=27826&SPID=2166&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=5200

LSU looked really good and definitely would have benefited from playing a number of games in short period. While undersized they spread the floor and had Simmons handling the ball but realistically playing as their 4 man from size perspective.

United started with Holt on him then Blanchfield had a go and even Kickert but they just switched any screens to try and keep a handle on him.

Reality is United were missing 20ppg from Goulding, 10 from Barlow, Tomlinson would have played 25 mins in place of Hadzimerovic plus a couple of guys underdone with Kickert (surgery) and Ibekwe coming off broken nose wearing a face mask. No jumping to any conclusions this early.

3 mins before half time cost United with their lean squad where LSU went on a quick scoring run and took all the momentum

Well, they get a chance to redeem themselves this Saturday night!

This makes the nbl look very average

"This makes the nbl look very average"

Absolute rubbish.

United were without Goulding and Barlow

Anyone know whether Andrej Lemanis was in attendance?

Is Barlow coming back at all?

Will the same roster be playing on Saturday or will Goulding and/or Barlow be part of the lineup?

It's hard to get a definitive gauge of the relative standards of NCAA and pro/state leagues. LSU may have beaten United by 8, but only beat a Queensland select team by 3, but no-one's questioning the standard of the NBL versus the QBL.

The University of California only beat the CoE 94-86, even though Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb are both lottery prospects and most of the team would be older and more physically mature than the CoE boys. Apparently California rested most of their starters in the 4th quarter, but still that's a fairly impressive result for the CoE.

Also remember that LSU and California both have top 5 recruiting classes.

A bit of a worry for Melbourne even missing some key players. The QBL all stars only lost to lsu by 3 points with a missed 3 at the buzzer to send it to overtime. Maybe the NBL needs to look closer to home for a some help with talent.