BATON ROUGE — Two teams coming off impressive opening game wins Friday meet Sunday at 3 p.m. in the championship game of the LSU Louisiana Classic at the Pete Maravich Center.
LSU, an 83-58 winner over Tulane, and Louisiana Lafayette, an 84-63 victor over Louisiana Tech, will play for the championship of this season-opening event.
The championship game will be the finale of the championship round doubleheader as first-round losers, Tulane and Louisiana Tech, will meet at 12:30 p.m. in the consolation game. The two games will be regionally televised by Cox Sports Television (Channel 37 in Baton Rouge).
The radio broadcast will be available on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
Tickets for the doubleheader are $17 for middle level seats and $15 for lower level seats but fans can get an upper level seat for $5 by bringing a ticket stub from the Saturday night LSU-Ole Miss football game.
LSU won its game easily, jumping out to an 11-1 advantage en route to a 34-21 halftime lead. The Tigers came out of the dressing room and outscored the Wave, 12-1, and eventually led the contest by as much as 37 before LSU Coach John Brady cleared the bench.
“I thought it was a good night for our team,” said Brady. I didn’t envision in any way that we were going to be able to separate the score as we did. I thought we got a great mix offensively. I thought for the most part we were able to run some offense and get some nice shots.”
The Tigers had four players in double figures led by freshman Glen Davis off the bench with his first collegiate double-double with 16 points and 13 rebounds. Tack Minor added 13, Antonio Hudson 11 points (6 assists) and Regis Koundjia 10.
Louisiana Lafayette proved to be the deeper team in its battle with Louisiana Tech, as five players were in double figures, paced by the 20 points of Tiras Wade and the 18 of Orien Greene. Greene also had eight assists and four steals, as Robert Lee was victorious in his debut as the Cajuns head coach.
The Tigers will again have to put two long win streaks on the line if it will win its 11th regular season tournament title. LSU has won 48 consecutive games dating back nearly 16 years on its home floor against Louisiana schools and 54 consecutive regular season non-conference home games dating back to 1997.
LSU and Louisiana Lafayette last met in December 2001 in a regular season game at the Maravich Center with LSU winning, 83-65. That was the first meeting of the two squads in basketball since 1945.