BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers, 6-0 on the basketball season, play their final home game of the 2003 portion of the season when they put an 11-game home winning streak on the line against the Tulane Green Wave in a 7 p.m. non-conference game at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The game, the final game for LSU prior to Christmas, will be broadcast on radio by the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net. Tickets for the game are available for $10 each at the upper ticket windows of the Assembly Center, beginning 90 minutes prior to tip off. There is no television broadcast for the event.
Along with the game, it will be Boy Scout night and all scouts in uniform will be admitted free and back by popular demand, Lou Mack and his Frisbee-catching dogs will be back to entertain the crowd at halftime.
The Tigers, besides an 11-game home winning streak, which includes five SEC wins last year, also will put on the line a 52-game non-conference regular season winning streak and a 46-game winning streak at home against Louisiana schools.
The Tigers are 6-0 for the first time since the 1999-2000 season. Tulane enters the contest 5-2 off a 65-62 loss to Southeastern Louisiana Saturday at Fogelman Arena. LSU comes off a week in which it held Utah to 51 points in a 65-51 win and Southern Mississippi to 50 points in a 65-50 decision on Saturday.
Tulane and LSU resumed playing a year ago after not having played basketball since 1982. The teams met last year in the Nokia Sugar Bowl Classic with LSU getting a 74-62 win. This will be Tulane’s first trip back to the Maravich Center since it beat LSU in March 1982, in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament.
This is the second of four straight Conference USA opponents the Tigers will face. After Southern Miss and Tulane, the Tigers travel to New Orleans Saturday for the Nokia Sugar Bowl Classic in which LSU will play host to UAB and then on Dec. 30 the Tigers will travel to Houston.
LSU will have to alter its starting lineup for this game as Antonio Hudson is expected to be out with a severely sprained left ankle suffered late in the game with Southern Mississippi last Saturday. That could move Darrel Mitchell into the perimeter joining starters Xavier Whipple, Regis Koundjia, Jaime Lloreda and Brandon Bass.
The Tigers are not back at home after the Tulane game until Jan. 10 when LSU plays its home Southeastern Conference opener against Alabama.