BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team, ranked 10th in the newest Associated Press poll, tries to get back on its winning ways Wednesday night at 7 p.m. when the Tigers host McNeese State in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Tickets are available online at www.LSUsports.net and beginning 90 minutes prior to tipoff at the upper concourse ticket windows at the Maravich Center. The game is LSU Athletics annual participation in local meteorologist’s Pat Shingleton’s “Pat’s Coats For Kids” campaign as fans can bring a new or used coat or a $5 donation and receive a coupon that can be redeemed at the ticket windows for a game ticket for just $1.
The game will be regionally televised on CST (Channel 37 in Baton Rouge) with the radio broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and at www.LSUsports.net in the “Geaux Zone powered by USAgencies.”
LSU is coming off a 57-53 loss to Wichita State on Saturday, a loss that dropped the Tigers from sixth in both polls to 10th in the AP media poll and 12th in the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll. In that game, Glen Davis had his 30th career double double, his first of the year, with 17 points and 13 rebounds. Tasmin Mitchell was the only other player in double figures with 11 points.
McNeese is 2-4 coming off a 77-53 decision over Texas College, also on Saturday. The Cowboys are under first-year head coach Dave Simmons who has also served as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech and most recently Northwestern State on the Division I level. Against Texas College, Jarvis Bradley and John Ford each had 15 points for the Cowboys with three other players scoring 10 points each.
McNeese’s other win came against Louisiana College with losses at Florida State, versus SMU and Illinois in tournament games at Florida State and then a home game against Louisiana Tech.
The Tigers will again put their lengthy winning streak against Louisiana schools at the Maravich Center which dates back to a win over McNeese State on Dec. 8, 1986. Since then 62 times LSU has come out on the winning end of games against state schools, including two wins this year against Nicholls State and Louisiana-Monroe.
LSU has defeated McNeese State in all 15 previous meetings, the last 14 as part of the 62-game winning streak. However, twice McNeese has had opportunities to win the game in the last possession during that time period.
LSU will be looking for some of the consistency in offense that was missing in the Wichita State game when LSU shot 33 percent from the field, was 1-of-5 from the arc and made just 7-of-13 free throws.
“We have to make more outside shots because it is going to be hard to get the ball in the post without hitting outside shots,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “In the second half last Saturday, we weren’t able to hit enough outside shots to where we could operate around the basket. It seemed like it was all a struggle offensively. We never really had any rhythm on offense. Certainly Wichita defended us well, but we still had some opportunities to make some plays but we weren’t able to capitalize on them. We have to be able to do that as we move along.”
LSU will hit the road for the first time this season after playing McNeese State, but it will be a short trip as the Tigers travel down I-10 for a meeting Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. against Tulane in the New Orleans Arena.