BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers, back in the national polls at No. 23 in the Associated Press poll, play their final non-conference opponent of the current basketball season Wednesday night at 7 p.m. when the Centenary Gents come to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The game pitting the 11-2 Tigers and the 7-9 Gents is not on television, but the game will be broadcast in Louisiana on the LSU Sports Network and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
Tickets for the game will be available during the day at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office and beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the upper ticket windows of the Maravich Assembly Center. One fan will have the chance to win a shooting contest at halftime for $10,000.
The Tigers come into the game looking to avoid a letdown between two Southeastern Conference games.
The Tigers are coming off an 85-72 win over seventh-ranked Mississippi State on Saturday night and will go back to league play on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. against Ole Miss in the Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU will be looking for more of the standout performances of point guard Torris Bright. The senior from Slidell is coming off back-to-back double-doubles with 20 assists and four turnovers in the last two games against UNO and Mississippi State. Bright also had 17 points and a perfect 7-of-7 night from the field against the Bulldogs.
Jaime Lloreda had 19 points against MSU, while Ronald Dupree doubled up again with 18 points and 12 boards.
LSU is expected to go with it normal three-guard, two forward lineup of Bright, Collis Temple III and Antonio Hudson at guards with Dupree and Lloreda at the forwards.
The Gents struggled in the middle of the season, but is coming in off two wins in the last four days, having beaten Texas Pan American at home on Saturday, 95-84, and then scoring a win at Northwestern State in Natchitoches, 83-72. Andrew Wisniewski is the big scorer for the Gents, averaging 20.2 points a game with 35 against Texas Pan American and another 22 against Northwestern State.
This is Centenary’s final year as an independent as after four years away from the Trans American Athletic Conference, the Gents will join the Mid-Continent Conference for the 2003-04 season.