BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team will get to test the carry over effect from a nice win over Utah earlier in the week when the Tigers play host to Conference USA team Southern Miss in a 3 p.m. contest Saturday at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The game is a back half of a doubleheader that begins at 11:30 a.m. with the LSU women taking on Southeastern Louisiana.
Tickets for the men’s game are $10 each and will be on sale at the upper ticket windows of the Maravich Center on Saturday. The men’s game will be regionally televised on Cox Sports Television throughout the state and the Gulf South, while the radio broadcast will be available on the LSU Sports Network and on line at www.LSUsports.net.
The Tigers are 5-0 on the young season and coming off a 65-51 win over Utah in which the Tigers defensive were able to control the bigger Utes and used their quickness to push the ball in transition and score. LSU ran out to a 30-19 lead at the half and Utah could get no closer than nine in the second half. Making the game even better for LSU was the fact that the Tigers were playing for the first time in 17 full days primarily because of school dead week and final fall semester exams.
Southern Miss is 5-2 on the year coming off a 95-91 overtime win against Georgia Southern in a game in which Charles Gaines of USM had 36 points, 18 rebounds and three blocked shots in 42 minutes.
The game matches two players averaging double-doubles with Gaines averaging 19.1 points per game and 11.3 rebounds, while Jaime Lloreda of LSU is averaging 23.8 points per game and 11.5 rebounds a contest. Lloreda cut his hand on the rim going up to block a shot against Utah and will play with six stitches in his right hand.
This is the first of a two-year series with Southern Miss as the two teams are scheduled to meet next year in Biloxi. This is also the first of four straight games that LSU will play against teams from Conference USA, as the Tigers will also host Tulane on Dec. 23 at 7 p.m. before traveling to New Orleans Dec. 27 for the annual Nokia Sugar Bowl Basketball Classic where the Tigers will meet Alabama-Birmingham. The four-game swing closes out with the Tigers traveling to Houston on Dec. 30.