BATON ROUGE — There is no good time for a team to play a team with the nation’s leading scorer on it, but that’s the task ahead for the LSU men’s basketball team when it plays host to the Centenary Gents at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
Tickets for the game are available for $10 each at the Maravich Assembly Center box office two hours prior to start time or all day on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
The radio broadcast of the game will be available on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge). The Pelican Sports Network on Cox Communications Channel 18 will televise the game on a tape delay basis in Baton Rouge at 1 p.m. Thursday and 9 p.m. Friday.
The Tigers, struggling defensively in the first half of the last two contests, will be sorely tested in trying to guard senior Ronnie McCollum of Centenary, who comes in averaging almost 28 points a game. He scored 40 and 39 points in his last two games and was this past week’s Louisiana Sports Writers Association College Basketball Player of the Week.
McCollum is however, one of the only scoring weapons the Gents have as the Division I independent (4-11) tries to muddle through a schedule pieced together from conferences and other independents through out the country. This is the second consecutive year the Tigers have faced the Gents, with LSU winning, 80-52, a year ago at Hirsch Memorial Coliseum in Shreveport.
The 9-4 Tigers are stepping out of conference for the final time this season before returning to conference play Sunday at 11:30 a.m. against Georgia.
LSU is expected to start its now usual lineup of Torris Bright, Collis Temple and Jermaine Williams, with Brian Beshara and Ronald Dupree at the forward. Charlie Thompson, Jason Wilson and Robert Royal are expected to come off the bench. Royal had his first points as a Tiger Saturday since joining the basketball team from the football team, scoring six.
Dupree continues to be among the leaders in the Southeastern Conference in both scoring and rebounding, averaging 18.5 points per game and 9.5 rebounds per game.