BATON ROUGE (AP) — First-year Alabama coach Anthony Grant didn’t want to make too much of his first victory in the Southeastern Conference.

‘‘It’s never going to be about me,’’ Grant said. ‘‘Guys are beginning to understand what we’re trying to do. They’re beginning to get more comfortable in the offense, understanding each other, what each guy brings to our team and what our team needs to be successful.’’

JaMychal Green scored 14 points and Alabama stretched its winning streak to four games with a 66-49 victory over LSU on Saturday night in the Southeastern Conference opener for both teams.

Senario Hillman scored 13 points and Mikhail Torrance 12 for the Crimson Tide (11-4, 1-0), which led by double digits early and by as much as 26 points in the second half en route to its fifth victory in six games.

Green, who entered the game shooting 56 percent for the season, was 6 of 11 from the field against the Tigers, hitting an array of short jump hooks and graceful turnaround jumpers from the lane.

‘‘My teammates just found me and I knew we had to have an inside presence, so I tried to do my best to get us points on the board,’’ Green said.

Bo Spencer scored 13 and Tasmin Mitchell had 11 points and nine rebounds for LSU (9-6, 0-1), which has lost four of five games. Dennis Harris added 12 points for the Tigers, who shot below 40 percent throughout and missed their first 11 3-point attempts before Chris Bass hit one with a little more than 10 minutes to go. By then, the Tigers were down 52-31.

‘‘It’s not the way we want to start in the league, but it’s really simple for me,’’ LSU second-year coach Trent Johnson said. ‘‘They are flat better than we are. … We just have to get back in the gym and do what we can to get better.’’

Rebuilding without three starters and its top two reserves from last season, LSU has struggled against teams from major conferences and could be in for a rough road in the SEC, one year after winning the league’s regular season title.

The loss to the Tide was LSU’s fourth by double-digits this season, with the others coming against Connecticut, Arizona State and Xavier.

‘‘We know they had only three main scorers coming in, and that was Storm (Warren), Tasmin and Bo and we knew we had to defend them,’’ Green said.

Pressing often on defense and pushing the tempo on offense, Alabama dominated the inside, outscoring the Tigers 38-16 in the paint and outrebounding LSU 37-27.

‘‘It was a battle of which style would win out today in terms of would the game be played at their pace or would the game be played at our pace,’’ Grant said. ‘‘I thought the guys did a good job of getting our style at the pace we want.’’

LSU turned the ball over 15 times, leading to 19 of Alabama’s points.

‘‘We could have cracked the press, but we were just being lazy with the ball,’’ Spencer said. ‘‘It wasn’t their pressure that bothered us. We were just being too casual.’’

LSU shot 33 percent (8 of 24) during the first half and it didn’t take long for Alabama to pull away.

Hillman’s reverse layup began a 17-4 run, capped by Green’s turnaround in the lane, giving Alabama a 21-10 lead.

Green scored 12 points in the first half, hitting a jump hook and mid-range jumper during an 8-2 Alabama run to close out the first 20 minutes.

LSU had 10 of its 15 turnovers in the first half, the last setting up Tony Mitchell’s breakaway dunk, which made it 33-18 at halftime.

The Tide kept coming when play resumed.

‘‘Coach always tells us to put our foot on our opponents’ throat when we got them down,’’ Green said. ‘‘We didn’t want them to get any momentum … or cut the lead down. We just kept attacking.’’

Hillman’s jumper capped a 14-4 Alabama run early in the second half, putting the Tide up 56-26.

Grant said he’d never used the foot-on-throat metaphor with his team, but rather had spoken of the importance of maintaining their intensity for 40 minutes. The coach may have been misquoted by his star player, but he could only grin about it because his message had still been understood.

‘‘I’m very proud of the focus we came in and played with tonight,’’ Grant said.