BATON ROUGE — After a determined Southern University team gave the LSU Tigers all they could handle in LSU’s 70-59 win in the men’s basketball season opener Friday, the Tigers try to find improvement against the McNeese State Cowboys in a 7 p.m. game Monday night at the Maravich Assembly Center.
Tickets are available for the game at $10 each beginning 90 minutes prior to tip off at the upper ticket windows of the Maravich Center. The game will be regionally televised in Louisiana and the Gulf South on Cox Sports Television (Cable Channel 37 in Baton Rouge). The radio broadcast of the game will be available on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on line at www.LSUsports.net.
The Tigers found themselves battling a very disciplined Southern team on Friday under first-year coach Michael Grant, up five at the half before Southern tied the game at 48-48 with fewer than 11 minutes to play. LSU was able to get the lead back and held control of the game, but not without a struggle.
“We just need to keep growing and keep learning and hopefully our young players will not get discouraged and keep their heads up and that is the thing that I told them after the game,” LSU Coach John Brady said in the his Friday post-game. “We just have got to get more consistent play out of (Xavier) Whipple, (Darrel Mitchell) and (Antonio) Hudson.”
That consistency hopefully starts with Hudson who had the fifth 20-point game of his career Friday with 20 against the Jaguars. Last year, only once was he able to put back-to-back double figure scoring games together. Whipple tied his career high with six assists, while Mitchell struggled from the field, hitting just one of eight shots.
Freshman Brandon Bass had a double double to open his college career, getting 15 points and 11 rebounds.
The Tigers will also have preseason All-SEC forward Jaime Lloreda back in the LSU lineup. Brady announced in a press release prior to the Southern game that Lloreda would be activated for the McNeese game after sitting out the two exhibition games and the Southern contest as part of his discipline package put together after violating team policy this summer.
McNeese State, under third year coach Tim Price, is coming off an opening win over Spring Hill on Friday in Lake Charles, 78-65. Greg Tucker scored 18 points to lead the Cowboys, while Edward Garriet, off the bench, had 15 and Bruce May 11.
The Tigers are in the midst of a four-game in nine-day home stand to open the 2003-04 basketball season. LSU will play Troy State on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and then Louisiana-Monroe at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. Tickets are available for both games and the Louisiana-Monroe is the first of the Super Saturday package games in which fans can buy four tickets for the five Saturday afternoon games this season for a total of $125.