BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team opens its exhibition season Monday night at the Maravich Assembly Center when the Tigers take on a group of former college players under the banner of Global Sports.
Tipoff for the game is 7 p.m. The game is on the season ticket package and tickets will be on sale during the day at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office and at the Assembly Center beginning two hours prior to game time.
The Global Sports team is in the midst of the 13-day, 13-game swing of colleges with started with losses at Auburn Thursday, Alabama-Birmingham Friday and a rallying win by Ole Miss Saturday. The team was in Nashville to face Vanderbilt on Sunday.
“We are looking forward to playing,” said LSU head coach John Brady. “We are no where near a polished group, but this game will give us an opportunity to see what we can and cannot do and some tape to allow us to study as we continue to work hard and improve.”
LSU has the most depth it has had in the five years of the John Brady era, with 10 scholarship players to draw from along with several walkons to choose from. The Tigers are in the final season of limited scholarships based on penalties handed out by the NCAA in the late 1990s.
The Tigers return four starters from last year: guards Torris Bright, Collis Temple III and Jermaine Williams and forward Ronald Dupree. Bright, Temple and Dupree are all juniors and Williams enters his senior season. Dupree led the Southeastern Conference in scoring with 17.3 points per game and was second in rebounding at 8.8 boards a game.
It is expected that those four will start along with Brad Bridgewater, the junior forward from New Roads, who is returning to action after tearing his left ACL on Oct. 31, 2000, in practice. Bridgewater has looked good in practice and has shown no real sign of problems with the leg.
Also expected to see significant playing time in the exhibition will be Charlie Thompson, the team’s walk-on backup point guard from a season ago and Jason Wilson, who did a good job stepping into Bridgewater’s role a year ago as a walk-on. Wilson received a scholarship for this season from the LSU coaching staff.
Along with those seven veteran members of the team, Brady will also take looks at signees freshman guards Xavier Whipple and Antonio Hudson and junior college transfer forward Thomas Davis. Also looking for minutes is sophomore JueMichael Young of Hammond, who sat out last season as a partial qualifier.
The Tigers will play two exhibition games, the last on Nov. 12, before opening the season on Saturday, Nov. 17, against Campbell. The Tigers host Southern University, the first of six Louisiana schools on the non-conference schedule on Nov. 19, before traveling to Hilo, Hawaii for the Big Island Invitational, Nov. 23-25.