BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team will try to sustain the gathering momentum of the past week when it returns to Southeastern Conference play Wednesday night at 7 p.m. against the Arkansas Razorbacks at the Pete Maravich Center.
Tickets ($12) for the game are available during the day on Wednesday at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office and beginning at the upper concourse ticket windows at the Maravich Center beginning at 5:30 p.m. There will be no live television for the game, although the game will be seen on same-day tape delay on Cox Sports Television at 10 p.m. The radio broadcast of the game will be available on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
As is the case at all Wednesday games, Guaranty Broadcasting will give a trip away. For the Arkansas game, a lucky fan will win a trip for two to New York City for an Eagles concert in the spring.
The Tigers have won its last two games since returning home, beating South Carolina, 79-64, one week ago and then this past Saturday downed Ohio State, 113-101, in double overtime. In the latter game, LSU came from three down in the final eight seconds to force overtime on a three by Darrel Mitchell, who finished with a career high of 32 points. Three LSU players had double doubles in the win with Tack Minor scoring 17 points with 10 assists, Glen Davis getting 15 points and 11 rebounds, while Brandon Bass scored 29 points with 10 rebounds. Bass had 14 of his 29 points in the two overtime sessions.
“I’ve been very proud of what this team has done the last couple of games,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “When we needed to get a basket against Ohio State in the half court we were able to execute and that’s the sign of a team that is showing some maturity. We need to continue to do that. Plus, what we’ve been able to improve upon that we weren’t doing earlier is we haven’t given up transition baskets or turned it over and let the other team get easy baskets in our goal. Arkansas loves to create turnovers and make you turn it over. They have the leading steal person, they have the leading shot blocker in the league and we can’t allow that to happen. That’s one area we have gotten better at and hopefully we can get that into the game (Wednesday night).”
LSU is expected to go with its regular starters for the 13th consecutive game as the Tigers try to up its present 8-5 overall and 1-1 in the Southeastern Conference record. Tack Minor will start at point guard, averaging 12.5 points per game and a league leading 6.0 assists per game. Joining him at the guards will be Darrel Mitchell (13.9 ppg, 2.9 apg) and Antonio Hudson (13.9 ppg, 3.3 rpg). At the forwards will be Brandon Bass (17.2 ppg, 8.5 rpg) and Glen Davis (13.2 ppg, 7.7 rpg).
Arkansas comes in at 13-4 overall and 1-3 in the SEC West. The Razorbacks opened conference play with a 69-46 win over Ole Miss, before falling to Florida (82-74), Alabama (64-61) and Mississippi State (80-55).
Following Wednesday’s game, LSU travels to Lexington for a nationally televised CBS game with Arkansas and then returns home next week for games against Ole Miss and Mississippi State.