BATON ROUGE — The day of Southeastern Conference basketball is being billed as the “East-West SEC Challenge” as all six games involve an Eastern Division team meeting a Western Division team.
But Saturday’s 2 p.m. game at the Pete Maravich Center could more accurately be described as a battle of the league’s two divisional second place teams — Florida in the East traveling to LSU in the West.
The game is the first of two in four days for LSU and the Tigers will be putting an 11-1 home record on the line. LSU is 14-8 overall and 7-4 in second place in the Western Division, a game ahead of Mississippi State, a team the Tigers defeated, 80-72, Wednesday in Starkville, It was LSU’s first sweep of the Bulldogs since 1993. Alabama has a two-game advantage over LSU for the lead in the division at 9-2.
Florida enters with a 16-8 record and an 8-3 record in the Eastern Division, two games up on third-place South Carolina. Kentucky leads the East with a 10-1.
The game will be regionally televised on JP Sports and the radio broadcast will be heard on the LSU Sports Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge and Channel 136 on Sirius Satellite Radio) and on line at www.LSUsports.net.
Tickets for the game are available on line until 12:30 p.m. when the upper concourse windows at the Maravich Center will open. Those fans with tickets for LSU’s 4 p.m. baseball game may use their tickets to purchase $5 tickets for the basketball game and for those bowlers in town for the American Bowling Congress Championships, up to two tickets can be purchased at the ticket windows for $5 each by showing an ABC membership card.
LSU has defeated Florida each of the last two times the teams have met, including last year in Gainesville when LSU was able to pull off a 73-70 decision. The Tigers were also winners in the second meeting of the 2003 season, 65-61, in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in New Orleans. Those two wins snapped a six-game winning streak by Florida that included victories in the last three meetings in Baton Rouge.
Brandon Bass will be looking to continue his strong play against the Gators after scoring 21 points with a career high 17 rebounds against Mississippi State Wednesday. Glen Davis had 19 points and nine rebounds against the Bulldogs as the inside play was able to carry the Tigers against Mississippi State, who must travel to Kentucky on Saturday.
Florida is coming off a strong 90-53 win in Gainesville on Wednesday over Ole Miss as the Gators shot 64.0 percent from the floor and a 64.7 percent from three-point range, 11-of-17. Anthony Roberson had 20 points while Matt Walsh added 16 and David Lee 12.
“Our team played well at Mississippi State,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “(Mississippi State) was ready to play, but so were we. We needed to get a road win against a quality team, and Mississippi State is definitely that. New we have two at home starting with Florida Saturday. (Florida is) playing very well right now and will be a tremendous challenge for us to be in a position to win the game, every though we are at home.”
LSU will play Alabama at 8 p.m. on Tuesday in the Maravich Center in a game nationally-televised by ESPN.