BATON ROUGE — The entire 2007-08 LSU men’s basketball team went through two practice session on Monday, the opening day of classes and the first day under NCAA regulations the new members of the team could join the veterans in preparations for the team’s Labor Day weekend exhibition tour in the Toronto, Canada area.
The team again continued to learn some of the offensive plans for the coming season and also worked for 30 minutes at the end of practice on conditioning as they prepare to play three games in a 39-hour period. The Tigers will travel to Toronto on Friday night after classes end and play at the University of Guelph on Saturday at 6 p.m. CDT, followed by games against York University on Sunday at 2 p.m. with the tour to conclude with a game at the University of Toronto on Labor Day at 10 a.m. The team will return to Baton Rouge on Labor Day night.
“We’re putting in basically an offense that they haven’t been very familiar with at all and they’ve picked up on it relatively quickly. Having a game in three or four days is a little different preparation than it would be when you have six and a half weeks,” said LSU Coach John Brady of the condensed time to practice prior to the games. “It’s good to get them together and throw something at them and see who picks up what and who understands and who needs more help in understanding how to execute.
“We haven’t gone up and down the floor,” LSU’s 11th-year coach said. “We’ve done it five-on-zero up and down the floor and certainly we are going to scrimmage some (Tuesday) afternoon and that will certainly make a difference once we start going up and down the floor. My biggest concern is to try to get some execution, try to play a full court game and then really have the conditioning that is necessary to play a quality game.
“We worked them all this summer and we gave them two and a half weeks off and to get them back and try to play a game in five days is difficult. But the most positive thing is we get to assemble our team, find out what we are about, who needs what help, what our weaknesses are, really identify the strengths of our team early on so that when we come back in October for official practice it will certainly make it more meaningful quicker because we have a better understanding of our players,” said Brady.
The Tigers will practice twice each of the next three days before a single practice Friday prior to departing for Toronto.