BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team didn’t get much time to enjoy its 81-62 win over Louisiana Lafayette as they quickly Sunday evening settled in to prepare for Monday night’s game against tough Northern Iowa at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Tipoff is 7 p.m. in the Maravich Center in a game that is part of the Las Vegas Holiday Classic that LSU will play in Thursday and Friday in Las Vegas. Northern Iowa is coming off a win in the Classic Saturday in Cedar Falls, 76-53, over Florida A&M.
Tickets are available for the game online at LSUsports.net for $11 with youth tickets (12 and under) available for $5. The game will be regionally televised on Cox Sports Television and the radio broadcast will be available on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network and in the “GeauxZone” at LSUsports.net.
LSU is 6-1 after the win over Louisiana-Lafayette, its 57th consecutive over a Louisiana school, while Northern Iowa is 7-1 on the year, including a win on its home floor over No. 12 Iowa, 67-63, in overtime on Dec. 6. Ironically, both of these teams lost their one game on the night of Nov. 29. The Tigers lost to Houston, the Panthers lost to Iowa State.
Against Louisiana-Lafayette, LSU was paced by the 20 points of Glen Davis, who scored 20 for the third consecutive game and doubled up for the third game with 12 rebounds. Darrell Mitchell had 17, Tasmin Mitchell 16 (11 boards) and Darnell Lazare scored 12.
“The difficult thing we have now is to turn around and play a very, very, very good Northern Iowa team,” said LSUcoach John Brady on the quick turnaround. “They are well-coached, experienced, can execute, can shoot the ball from the perimeter, a lot like the West Virginia team that’s extremely well-coached and runs schemes and patterns and takes advantage of mistakes defensively. The thing we have to be careful about is our players getting enough rest to be able to go as best they can Monday night.”
The Tigers practiced about an hour and 15 minutes late Sunday running some play drills and getting a look at the scouting report for the Panthers. Junior point guard Tack Minor did practice for the first time and is expected to dress for the first time this season Monday night.
In UNI’s win over Florida A&M, Ben Jacobson was the leading scorer with 14 points, while forward Grant Stout had 10 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks.
LSU will be looking to continue its domination on the rebounding glass where it leads the nation in rebound margin at over 20 a game. LSU out rebounded Louisiana-Lafayette, 57-28, with the Tigers having 25 offensive boards.
Following Monday’s game, the Tigers will travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday and will play Arkansas-Monticello at 7 p.m. CST on Thursday and Cincinnati on Friday at 9:30 p.m. CST at Valley High School in Vegas. The Tigers will return to Baton Rouge after the Friday game and will be off until Dec. 27 when they will begin preparations for their New Year’s Eve afternoon encounter with Ohio State (Noon, CST, ESPNU) in Columbus, Ohio. LSU’s next home game will be on Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 7 p.m. against Tulane.