BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers, successful at home, hope that the success can continue to carry over to the road as it travels to Auburn Saturday to take on the Auburn Tigers at Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum in a game to be televised by JP Sports.
The radio broadcast of the game will be heard in Louisiana on the LSU Sports Network, Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge, and on line at www.LSUsports.net.
LSU is trying to continue to cement its place in the NCAA Tournament field after three straight wins — on the road at Mississippi State, at home vs. Florida and Tuesday’s win against No. 16 Alabama. The Tigers won 61-59 on a Ross Neltner tip in at the buzzer following a Brandon Bass miss.
LSU is 16-8, 9-4 in the SEC Western Division, one game behind leading Alabama and two games ahead of Mississippi State. An LSU win today or a Mississippi State loss would clinch a first-round bye for LSU in the SEC Championships which begin March 10 in Atlanta.
Auburn is 12-14 on the season and 3-10 in the league under first-year coach Jeff Lebo. The home Tigers come into their arena off a strong performance at Rupp Arena against Kentucky Wednesday night, never giving the Wildcats much of a chance to feel comfortable with the margin of the game, out rebounded the much bigger Kentucky team and hitting 12 threes before Kentucky finally won, 81-73.
LSU won the first meeting in the Pete Maravich Center between the two teams, 90-69, on Feb. 9, with all five LSU starters in double figures. Darrel Mitchell and Tack Minor had 17 points each with Brandon Bass and Antonio Hudson getting 15 each and Glen Davis 12. LSU shot 56.9 percent from the field, 9-of-17 from the arc in that game. Auburn, however, leads the series in game played at Auburn, 31-29.
“We were fortunate to play well defensively against Alabama,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “The next challenge we have is to go to Auburn and play well on the road. What sometimes is tougher to overcome is when people assume that someone should beat someone. Mississippi State might have assumed that they were going to beat Auburn. It doesn’t work out and Auburn wins. We have our work cut out for us to be ready to mentally compete on Saturday.”
After this game, LSU remains on the road for a Wednesday game at Ole Miss before LSU closes out the regular season on Saturday, March 5, in a 3 p.m. game (moved up from 7 p.m. for television) at the Maravich Center against Vanderbilt.