BATON ROUGE — The young, but athletic LSU men’s basketball team makes its regular season debut Friday night at 7 p.m. at the Maravich Assembly Center against the Southern Jaguars.
The game is the start of the 98th season of men’s college basketball on the LSU campus and the first of 16 home games that the Tigers will play in the newly remodeled Maravich Center.
The game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge). Members of the “Geaux Zone” on www.LSUsports.net can watch live streaming video or listen to the broadcast. To join now, click here.
Tickets are on sale for the game for $11 for adults and $5 for youth 12 and under beginning at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center.
LSU’s team includes seven freshmen and at times during the two exhibition wins, LSU had four and at one point five freshmen on the floor. The Tigers beat EA Sports on Nov. 10, 74-54, and LSU-Shreveport, 122-58 (Nov. 15) in preparation for this game.
Southern is 0-2 on the season having opened in a preliminary round of the Guardians Classic in Austin, Texas. The Jaguars lost to Texas, 89-56, on Tuesday night and then lost Wednesday to Sacramento State, 67-64, in overtime. The Jags have a new head coach in veteran Rob Spivery who is in his 21st year as a head coach and he came to Southern after nine years at Alabama State.
Against Texas, Peter Cipriano was the leading Southern scorer with 14 points and 10 boards, while Chris Alexander had 15 points to lead the Jaguars in the Sacramento State game.
If the exhibition games hold true, the Tigers will start senior Darrel Mitchell at point guard and redshirt freshman Garrett Temple at the other guard with freshman Tasmin Mitchell, sophomore Glen Davis and junior Darnell Lazare. This will mark the third season opener since the 1999-2000 season that a freshman has started the season opener for a John Brady team.
Davis, last year’s SEC Freshman of the Year, averaged 18.0 points and 7.5 rebounds in the two exhibition games, while Darrel Mitchell averaged 17.5 points with a combined nine assists and seven steals. Tasmin Mitchell averaged 14.5 points, Lazare 12.0 points and redshirt freshman Tyrus Thomas came off the bench in both games to average 14.0 points a contest.
The Tigers enter the game with a 52-game winning streak in regular-season home contests against Louisiana schools and an overall 11-game home winning streak dating back to last season. The Tigers enter the season with the 12th longest home winning streak in NCAA Division I play and the combined winning streak of 27 games by the LSU men’s and women’s team ranks as the third best in the country behind only Gonzaga (39) and North Carolina (34).
The last time LSU lost to an in-state school in the Maravich Center was Dec. 6, 1988 when Louisiana Tech beat LSU, 111-109, in overtime.
This will be the seventh meeting between the two schools with LSU winning the previous six meetings. The teams last played on the opening night of the 2003-04 season with the Tigers a 70-59 victor. LSU has won every opening night game in Coach Brady’s first eight years at LSU and the last time LSU lost an opening night home game was the start of the 1986-87 season.
Following the Southern game, LSU will be back in action on Monday night against Nicholls State. LSU plays its first road game on Saturday, Nov. 26, against West Virginia.