BATON ROUGE — Two injury-riddled teams looking to make improvement do battle Wednesday night at the Maravich Assembly Center at 7 p.m. as the LSU Fighting Tigers play host to the South Carolina Gamecocks.
LSU is 11-6 and 1-5 in the SEC West after falling to Arkansas, 59-52, on Saturday at the Assembly Center. South Carolina is a loser of two straight after losing at Florida, 69-57, Saturday afternoon in Gainesville. The Gamecocks are 10-7 overall and 2-4, last in the SEC East.
Tickets for the game are $10 each and will be available at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office during the day and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net. The ticket windows at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center will open approximately 1 1/2 hours prior to the game.
The contest will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net. The game will be taped by the Pelican Sports Network and shown in Baton Rouge on Cox Communications Cable Channel 18 at 1 p.m. Thursday and 7 p.m. Friday.
LSU is missing two players because torn ACL injuries: center Brad Bridgewater and guard Lamont Roland. Bridgewater went down before the season started and Roland was lost late in the first half of the opening conference game in Baton Rouge against Alabama.
The Tigers will have their usual lineup of the five remaining scholarship players: Torris Bright, Jermaine Williams and Collis Temple III at guards, with Brian Beshara and Ronald Dupree at forwards. Dupree is second in the league in scoring average at 18.1 points per game and the sophomore is tied for the league in rebounds at 9.3 rebounds per game. Temple is eighth in the league in scoring at 15.4 points per game.
The Gamecocks are playing without All-SEC Freshman forward Chuck Eidson, who tore his ACL in the Vanderbilt game, Jan. 17, and forward Travis Kraft, who is battling a sprained right foot and has not played since hitting the game-winning three-pointer to be Florida Jan. 7. Also forward Calvin Clemmons is questionable fro the game with a sprained ankle.
Aaron Lucas is the leading scorer for the Gamecocks, averaging 11.0 points per contest with Jamel Bradley averaging 10.2 points a game.
The Tigers looked like they might be able to get two straight conference wins against the Razorbacks, but couldn’t finish the game after staying close in the second half.
“Defensively, we made some mistakes in our zone defense,” said LSU coach John Brady. “We had some opportunities to really rebound the ball better. We made a couple of critical errors down the stretch. We’ve worked on it and hopefully it will be better against South Carolina.
“They (South Carolina) are more powerful around the goal and they are extremely well coached. I have a lot of respect for Eddie Fogler and how he puts his team together. They are not going to beat themselves. We are going to have to play well and execute down the stretch if the game is close.”
The Gamecocks have lost five of its last games, but has been in nearly every contest in that span. LSU won its first conference game against Mississippi State one Wednesday ago.