BATON ROUGE — With All-America forward Stromile Swift “held out of practice” with a sore throat, the Tigers held their final practice before departing at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday for a Sweet 16 matchup with eighth-seeded Wisconsin in Albuquerque, N.M. Tipoff is at 9:15 central time Thursday.
For LSU (28-5), this is the first Sweet 16 since 1987 when the Tigers beat DePaul, 63-58, to advance to the Elite 8.
Swift, who attended the beginning of practice and the Tigers’ film session, became sick early Monday after attending class and was held out of practice by the trainers and coaches.
“Stromile was a little sick,” Brady said after the hour and a half practice. “He had a sore throad and some sinus problems, a little weak and a little dizzy. It better to hold him out that to make him do something that he doesn’t feel he can do.
“The doctors will see him tonight. It’s more of a precaution than anything. I’d hate to put him out there and ‘the coach made him prqactice and he got worse.’ If there’s a day to miss, today’s the day.”
LSU advanced to the Sweet 16 by defeating Southeast Missouri State, 64-61, and Texas, 72-67, in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
Wisconsin (20-13) defeated No. 9-seeded Fresno State, 66-56, and No. 1-seeded Arizona, 66-59, to advance to play fourth-seeded LSU.
“I have a lot of respect for Dick Bennett and his coaching philosophy and how they play,” Brady said. “They’re a half-court man-to-man defensive team. They’re a half-court offensive team. There’s nothing much in between. Individually, if it was a one-on-one game, I’d feel really good about it. But, it’s a team game and he probably puts together a team as well as anybody in the country.
“They’re all very unselfish and they may be the best team-defensive collection that we’ve played this year. They’re only a 42-43 percent field goal shooting team this year, so they don’t get the credit they deserve for being able to play good team defense.”
Wisconsin, like the Tigers, had a rough start to conference play. The Badgers began Big Ten play by losing four of their first five game to Indiana, Ohio State, Purdue and Penn State.
Before winning 10 straight, LSU was 1-3 in the SEC with loses to Tennessee, Florida and Vanderbilt.
“They’re playing their best right now and it’s going to take a real good effort from us in order to have a chance to win this game,” Brady said.
The Tigers hope to “up-tempo” the game and “force the action” at times in order to draw the Badgers into their style of play. Judging by LSU’s past performance this season, if the Tigers score 70 points, they should win. LSU is 22-0 when scoring more than 70 points this season.
“I think we’re confortable playing both ways. We’ve won games in the 60s, we’ve won games in the 90s. But, what I’d like for us to do is to get some easy baskets in transition, get some deflections and get it down the floor quickly. We’ll try to press them from time to time, but hopefully just by advancing the ball quickly and getting the ball up around the goal to our big guys, we can get some easy baskets against this team. We’re going to need some as the game goes on.”
Should LSU win, the Regional Final game would tipoff at 3:40 p.m. CST in Albuquerque.