BATON ROUGE — It’s been almost 17 full days of studying, practicing, final exams, weight lifting and video sessions, but the LSU men’s basketball team is ready to finally go back to action Tuesday night against the University of Utah in a nationally-televised game.
The first meeting between the two schools is set for a straight up 8 p.m. tip off on ESPN, the second straight year the Tigers have been featured in a December match up on the network. Next year, the teams will play in Salt Lake City in the second half of this home and home contract. The game will be broadcast throughout Louisiana and the Southeast on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
Tickets are still available for $10 and will be on sale at the upper ticket windows of the Assembly Center beginning 90 minutes prior to the game. Fans are urged to come early and join their friends on the concourse of the Maravich Center for a look at the Southeastern Conference football championship trophy and fans will be able to get their picture taken with the 2003 trophy. Several football players are expected to be on hand for a halftime ceremony and one lucky student who can make the most creative sign will win $100.
The Tiger team last played on Nov. 29, downing Louisiana Monroe, 96-65, before having to shut things down for dead week and final exams (Dec. 3-13).
The Tigers have been able to get a lot of work in around the exams and had a full-scale 45-minute scrimmage this past Saturday, complete with officials calling the action.
“It’s been good,” LSU Coach John Brady said. “We’ve had time to work on specific things we need to work on. We’ve really tried to work on executing plays. We’ve put in some new plays, and we’ve worked on our conditioning. We’ve run a lot after practice and played a lot of five-on-five. At the same time, because of our young players, it’s not an ideal situation to have not played in awhile because we were improving.”
LSU did make strides in getting off to a 4-0 start, one of 22 teams remaining in Division I to enter Monday undefeated. Senior forward Jaime Lloreda will come in as the Southeastern Conference leader in points (26.3 ppg) and rebounds (12.7 rpg), while shooting 73.7 percent from the field in the last three games. Freshman forward Brandon Bass has also been as advertised early averaging 12.3 points per game, 9.0 rebounds per game and 3.3 blocks per contest.
The rest of the LSU starters are expected to remain from the last two games with Xavier Whipple (6.5 ppg, 4.8 apg), Antonio Hudson (13.3 ppg, 5.8 rpg) and Regis Koundjia (7.3 ppg, 3.3 rpg) rounding out the quintet.
The Utes are 6-2 coming into the contest, the losses coming in the Final Four games of the preseason NIT in New York. Since then, the Utes have won three straight, holding its last two opponents, San Diego and Savannah State to just 39 points each while scoring in the 80s. Utah leads the nation in scoring defense at 48.0 points per game.
The Tigers have had the luxury of looking at Utah for several days now, a double-edge sword as far as Brady is concerned.
“We’ve really had too much time to prepare,” he said. “We looked at film for three days. It’s difficult not playing someone else.”
This is the start of another three games in eight days run at home prior to Christmas as following the Utah game, the Tigers will play Southern Miss Saturday at 3 p.m. and then close out the pre-Christmas portion of the schedule by playing Tulane on Tuesday, Dec. 23, at 7 p.m.