BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team moved up three spots in the rankings in its second consecutive week in the poll, coming in at No. 21 when the poll was released late Monday afternoon.
For the first time this season, the Tigers were also ranked No. 25 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll which was released later on Monday.
LSU won its only game of the week, a 74-62 win over Tulane in the Nokia Sugar Bowl Classic in New Orleans. LSU was hosting the University of New Orleans later Monday evening in the Maravich Assembly Center.
Mississippi State, which upset No. 5 Oklahoma in the first game of the Sugar Bowl Classic on Saturday, moved eight spots from 16th to eighth and also received one of the 71 first-place votes. Alabama remains No. 1 for the second straight week ahead of Pittsburgh, Duke, Arizona and Connecticut.
This marks the first time LSU has been ranked in consecutive polls since being ranked in the final seven polls of the 1999-2000 season.
Rounding out the top 10 are Notre Dame, Texas, Mississippi State, Oregon and Oklahoma. Teams 11-20 are Illinois, Florida, Marquette, Michigan State, Creighton, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Xavier and Kentucky, dropping from 14. Following LSU are Maryland and Wake Forest and two poll newcomers, Louisville at No. 24 and Texas Tech at No. 25.