BATON ROUGE — LSU puts two long regular season home win streaks on the line Monday night when the Privateers of UNO come to Baton Rouge for a 7 p.m. game at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The game will not be televised, but will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge. Tickets will be on sale on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net and at LSU Athletic Ticket Office from 1-5 p.m. on Monday with the upper concourse ticket office at the Maravich Assembly Center to open at 5:30 p.m.
The first 2,500 fans at the Assembly Center Monday night will receive the first four cards in a set of LSU men’s basketball trading cards for the 2002-03 season.
The 24th-ranked Tigers assured their place in the Associated Press poll for a second straight week with their win over Tulane, 74-62, Saturday in the Nokia Sugar Bowl Classic in New Orleans as the new poll is expected out sometime Monday afternoon. But the Tigers will try to keep other marks alive against the Privateers, a team which knocked off LSU, 60-59, in Lakefront Arena last year.
The Tigers end the contest having won 43 consecutive non-conference regular season home games dating back to 1997 and LSU has won 41 straight games in the Assembly Center against Louisiana competition, a mark that dates back to early in the 1988-89 basketball campaign.
Ronald Dupree is coming off a season-high equaling performance of 22 points against the Wave and the 8-1 Tigers will be looking for more good things from point-guard Torris Bright, who not only continued his fine point guard work with six assists and just two turnovers, but also put in 17 points. Bright had three first-half treys in that game to become the school’s all-time career leader in three-point baskets.
The Privateers have not played since a two-game tournament in Hawaii, Dec. 20 and 21, beating Cal Poly 89-75 before losing to Hawaii, 68-56. UNO is 7-3 on the year, starting with six straight wins before losing three of the last four games. Hector Romero, who hit the winning shot against LSU a year ago, is averaging 22.8 points and 10 rebounds a game for UNO, with Johnell Smith averaging 16.7 points a contest.
Romero had 38 points against Cal Poly and 25 against Hawaii in the tournament.
In other LSU basketball news, LSU Coach John Brady announced that junior guard Courtney Trask of Baton Rouge has elected not to return to the team following the Christmas break.
“Courtney Trask has decided to not continue his basketball career and concentrate on other areas of his life, in particular, obtaining his degree which is extremely important,” said Brady. “There is no finer young person than Courtney and I have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy my relationship with him. He knows we support him and will do all we can to help him be a success at whatever he chooses to do.”
Trask played in six games at LSU this season after transferring from Memphis prior to the 2001-02 season, averaging 3.8 minutes a game, averaging 0.8 points and 0.5 rebounds a game.
The LSU-UNO game will be the final game for LSU before opening the 2003 portion of the schedule Sunday in Athens, Ga., against the University of Georgia. That will be the opening league game for both teams and the contest will be regionally televised by CBS Sports following the NFL wild-card playoff game with tip off scheduled for approximately 3:30 p.m. CST.