FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The LSU Tigers will step in the Southeastern Conference as part of the league’s first contest on national television here Tuesday night and Coach John Brady hopes for better results than a year ago.
The Tigers traveled to Georgia last year to open conference play on national television and the Bulldogs blitzed LSU in the second half en route to an easy win. This time the Tigers and Razorbacks will open the conference schedule on ESPN in the first of the weekly Super Tuesday league games at 8 p.m. CST at Bud Walton Arena.
The game will be broadcast in Louisiana on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
This is the third straight year that LSU has opened the conference schedule away from the Assembly Center and the Tigers are 1-5 in John Brady‘s tenure in the opening SEC game. His team’s ability, especially the first-year players, to handle the Bud Walton experience could be a key in how well LSU opens this conference schedule.
The Tigers are 9-1, coming off a 66-63 win over Centenary in a game where careless turnovers led to 20 Centenary points and for the second straight game the Tigers had to rally from a big early deficit, falling behind 10-2 and by as much as 11 points in the first half.
But LSU did shoot the ball better from the floor, hitting over 50 percent of their shots as guard Antonio Hudson had 22 points in the contest. Now the key is for Hudson and rest of the perimeter to show the consistency that LSU needs to open things back up inside for Jaime Lloreda (the league’s leading scorer and rebounder) and Brandon Bass.
“Our perimeter has got to play more consistently and I think they can,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “Hopefully we can establish that as we go along, but that will be tough to do at Arkansas. We’ve got to get back defensively and not give them easy baskets. We can’t let our turnovers lead to easy lay ups at their end of the floor. If you go up there and it gets loose a little bit, the crowd can just stop your team from playing and you can easily lose your concentration.”
Arkansas is 8-3 on the season and had a big win on Saturday at Fayetteville over North Texas, 96-61. Four players were in double figures for second year coach Stan Heath, topped by Ronnie Brewer with 14, Jonathon Modica 13, Billy Pharis 12 and Eric Ferguson 11. Also football quarterback Matt Jones, fresh off leading the football Razorbacks in the Mainstay Independence Bowl on Dec. 31, played 11 minutes and scored two points.
NOTES:
- The Tigers will fly back to Baton Rouge after the Tuesday game and after taking Wednesday off, will begin preps for Saturday’s conference home opener with Alabama
- The game has a 2 p.m. tip off and will be regionally televised by JP Sports
- Tickets for the game are $12 and are available at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net
- Tiger Sportsline with John Brady, the weekly call-in radio show, will be heard this week and next on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. because of travel and game conflicts
- This Wednesday’s edition will be in the LSU Sports Network studios without the normal live audience at Superior Grill in Baton Rouge because of a previously scheduled event in the restaurant
- The show returns to Superior on Jan. 14 and the show goes back to its normal Monday night time slot on Jan. 19.