BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team returns to the friendly confines of the Pete Maravich Center Wednesday night for a 7 p.m. contest with Auburn.
Tickets are on sale all day Wednesday at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office and online at www.LSUsports.net. Tickets go on sale at the upper concourse ticket windows at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Again, as has been the norm on Wednesday home games, a trip will be given away, courtesy of Guaranty Broadcasting. For this game, a trip for two to Las Vegas will be offered for this spring’s Academy of Country Music Awards.
There is no live or tape-delayed television broadcast for the game, and the radio broadcast will be available on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge). The game will also be online at www.LSUsports.net and on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 135.
LSU is 10-1 at home this season, 4-0 in the league with wins over South Carolina, Arkansas, Ole Miss and Mississippi State. The Tigers are 12-7 and 5-3 and enter the game in second place in the SEC Western Division. LSU is coming off a week of two games on the road, having beaten Georgia 95-79 in Athens on Wednesday, before struggling in a 77- 55 loss at Tennessee on Saturday.
Auburn comes into the contest at 11-10 and 2-6 in the Western Division under first year coach Jeff Lebo, but the visiting Tigers come in on a high, having knocked off Mississippi State as well in their last game, 90-76. Auburn freshman Frank Tolbert scored a career high 29 points on 10-of-14 shooting against the Bulldogs. Tolbert, who earned SEC Player of the Week honors, had only scored 26 points combined in Auburn’s previous seven games.
Toney Douglas is the other big freshman star on the Auburn team, averaging 17.8 points a game, third in the Southeastern Conference in scoring.
The LSU Tigers had a chance to move into first with a win at Tennessee but as it turned out all three of the top teams in the Western Division fell on the road Saturday.
“The thing that bothered me the most is the opportunity we would have had, had we won the game,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “We did finish the first round 5-3 and that’s a positive for us. The way (Auburn) plays will present us with some problems. We will have to use our strength against them and pound the basketball inside.”
The Tigers strength inside continues to score and rebound well for LSU as Brandon Bass has had 10 straight games scoring in double figures, averaging 17.2 points per game and 8.5 rebounds a contest. Glen Davis has had double figure rebounds in six of the last seven games and double doubles both games last week. He comes into the contest averaging 13.2 points per game and 9.1 rebounds per game.
LSU’s guards are still also averaging in double figures — Antonio Hudson (13.3 ppg), Darrel Mitchell (13.4 ppg) and Tack Minor (10.6 ppg and a league leading 5.4 assists per game).
The Tigers go on the road for a couple of games after the Auburn contest, traveling to Fayetteville to meet Arkansas in a 2 p.m. game Saturday, before traveling to Starkville to face Mississippi State on Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. Both games will be televised regionally by JP Sports.