BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team, coming off a three-point home loss to Tennessee in which they did enough good things to win, tries to capture the style of play it had in the conference opener at Tuscaloosa when it plays host to the seventh-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide.
The two teams square off for the second time at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with a 7 p.m. tipoff. In the first meeting on Jan. 5 in the conference opener for both teams, LSU led deep into the game before falling on two free throws with 1.3 second remaining, 76-74.
Since then the Tide has take the overall lead in the conference and the Western Division with a 6-1 record while the Tigers are trying to stop a three-game losing skid, standing at 2-5 in the West.
Tickets for the game are available for $10 each beginning 90 minutes prior to the game at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center box office. There is no television for the contest, which will be broadcast on radio in Louisiana on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
Of the Tigers’ 61-58 loss to Tennessee on Wednesday, LSU coach John Brady said, “I thought in our game versus Tennessee, we did enough good things to win the game, but we just came up short in the end. Tennessee stepped up and made some big shots when they needed to.”
The Tide has been playing with much confidence of late, building a 30-plus point lead against Arkansas on Wednesday night in Tuscaloosa before getting a 109-94 win to up their season record to a league best 18-3. LSU is 12-8 entering the fray.
“Alabama is playing better than anybody in the league right now and maybe even the whole country,” said Brady. “We will have to play even better than we did when we played them on their court earlier in the season to have a chance.”
Rod Grizzard leads the Tide, averaging 15.4 points per game with Erwin Dudley, tied for the league lead in double-doubles with nine, averaging 15.0 points and 8.5 rebounds, second in the league.
The Tigers will go with their standard lineup highlighted by Biloxi junior Ronald Dupree, who went over the 1,000 point mark in his career Wednesday, becoming the 31st player in school history to accomplish the feat.
LSU goes on the road after this game, traveling to Nashville on Wednesday to take on Vanderbilt at Memorial Gymnasium.