BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team looks to continue its hold on the lead in the Southeastern Conference Western Division while the opponent looks to solidify its post-season chances with a quality win when the Tigers and the Arkansas Razorbacks do battle Wednesday night at the Maravich Center.
The Tigers and Razorbacks will tip at just past 7 p.m. in a game to be regionally televised by JP Sports (WBXH-TV in Baton Rouge).
The radio broadcast of the game will be available on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and in the “Geaux Zone powered by USAgencies” at LSUsports.net.
Tickets for the game are $14, $5 for youth 12 and under and are available online at LSUsports.net and at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office through 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Ticket sales on game night will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center.
The halftime guest will be the Red Panda Acrobat from San Francisco who will perform her Guinness World Record Unicycle Bowl Flipping act.
LSU enters the game with a 15-6 record and 7-1 in the SEC West. The Tigers are tied with Tennessee (who played Tuesday night against Kentucky) for the league lead and are two games ahead of Alabama in the race for the Western Division title. Arkansas, 15-6 and 4-4 in the league, is coming into the game off wins in three of the last four games and the loss was a 78-76 decision in Lexington against Kentucky.
In Saturday’s game, Arkansas downed South Carolina, 73-59, at Bud Walton Arena. It wasn’t the league’s leading scorer, Ronnie Brewer, who hurt the Gamecocks, but SEC Player of the Week, Jonathon Modica, who scored a career-high 37 points on 11-of-17 shooting, including a career-high 6-of-9 from behind the arc. He also matched a career-high making 9-of-10 free throws. The 37 points is the high in the SEC this year.
The Tigers are coming off their first conference loss on Saturday at Alabama, 67-62, in a game that proved to be very equal statistically, but the Crimson Tide was able to keep its place in the SEC Western Division by making the right play at the right time.
“This is a really important game for us and a really important game for them,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “Arkansas is as good as anyone in the league. They have experience with good players. I don’t think you can judge a team on how good or bad they are by a few possessions. They are playing consistently well. They are close to being a good basketball team and things going their way. Hopefully it won’t start to turn their way until after Wednesday night.”
LSU fell out of the national polls after the loss to Arkansas, but just barely. LSU is 26th in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today poll, but only one point out of the top 25 in AP and four points our of the top 25 in the coaches poll.
The Tigers, after Wednesday’s game, will travel to Gainesville for a 1 p.m. EST contest at Florida (JP Sports, regionally-televised) and return for another Wednesday night home game on Feb. 15 against Mississippi State.