BATON ROUGE — The 16th-ranked LSU men’s basketball team puts its lengthy 18-game home winning streak on the line Wednesday night when the Ole Miss Rebels come to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for a 7 p.m. contest.
There will be no live television for the game that is the first contest with school in session since the Dec. 5 Texas A&M game. The game will be shown on a same-night tape delay on CST. The radio broadcast of the game will be available on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and at LSUsports.net in the “Geaux Zone.”
Tickets for the game are available online at LSUsports.net and all day Wednesday at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office. The ticket windows at the Maravich Center on the upper concourse will open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $14 and $5 for youth (age 3-12) with LSU students able to enter for free with a valid university ID.
The Tigers are 12-4 on the season, 1-1 in the SEC, with a 64-62 win Saturday at home over Auburn, while the Rebels under first year coach Andy Kennedy are 1-2 after coming off an upset win at home over the Arkansas Razorbacks.
LSU and Alabama enter the week tied for the lead in the West at 1-1 with the remaining four teams in the West standing at 1-2.
LSU’s home winning streak in the league, tied for the 14th longest in SEC history, began in March 2004 against Ole Miss and one of the toughest wins in the streak came at the end of the 2006 season when the Rebels battled the Tigers down to the wire in the regular season finale.
LSU had to fight hard to defeat the Auburn Tigers on Saturday and it took the 23-points in his first start from Terry Martin to get the Tigers going in the second half. LSU also got 12 from Tasmin Mitchell and a well-defended Glen Davis added 11 points and 11 rebounds to help his league leading rebound average of 10.9 boards a game.
The Tigers will be looking to get out to a quicker start than they have in their first two Southeastern Conference games, when they missed a combined 52 shots in the first 20 minutes (12-of-42 at Alabama, 10-of-32 against Auburn). In both games, however, the Tigers got their shooting touch and stayed in the game with a combination that has been an LSU staple in recent years, rebounding and defending.
LSU is averaging over 40 rebounds a game and had 19 offensive rebounds against Auburn. LSU got its self out of a hole in the first half of Saturday’s game by making three three-point field goals in the final two minutes to cut a double-digit lead to just four at the intermission.
“Had our team not played hard and rebounded and defended the way we need to, that game might not have turned out as we would have liked it,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “Ole Miss is the same kind of team (as Auburn). Like Auburn, Ole Miss has just about everyone back from last year. They have a new coach. Our team has got to be ready to play. It’s going to be a good game and hopefully our fans will come out and watch us play.”