BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team, coming off a 71-68 overtime win over No. 13 West Virginia on the road Saturday, has moved into the 25th spot in the two major college basketball polls which were released on Monday.
The Tigers are ranked in one of the major polls, ESPN/USA Today or Associated Press, for the first time since a one-week ranked at No. 24 on Feb. 17, 2004. This is the 14th poll that the Tigers have been in during the John Brady era.
LSU had received votes in the first two sets of polls, hovering around the 30-33 mark in the polls. West Virginia, the team the Tigers beat on Saturday, fell to 26th in both of the polls. This is the earliest a Tiger team has been ranked in the top 25 since the Tigers were ranked in the preseason poll of 1991-92.
In the AP poll, West Virginia and Syracuse dropped out and LSU was joined in the poll by North Carolina at No. 24. This is the 171st poll appearance for the Tigers in the AP poll since LSU first debuted in the wire service poll on Dec. 16, 1952.
A review of records available to LSU appears to indicate that the win at West Virginia may be the first time that LSU has defeated a non-Southeastern Conference nationally ranked team in the Associated Press poll on the other team’s home floor.
LSU has defeated Georgia Tech in its home city of Atlanta (1986), but that game was at the Omni and not at their home floor of Alexander Memorial Coliseum.
The Tigers host Houston in a regionally televised game on Fox Sports Net on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.