BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team wrapped up its practices early Friday morning and left after classes for a three-game exhibition tour of the Toronto, Canada, area over the Labor Day Weekend.
The Tigers will open play Saturday at 6 p.m. CDT against the University of Guelph Gryphons in Guelph, Ontario, about 65 miles from Toronto. The team will play in Toronto both Sunday and Monday, playing on the York University campus in a 2 p.m. game on Sunday and the Varsity Blues of the University of Toronto at 10 a.m. on Monday. The team will return to Baton Rouge late Monday night.
The Sunday game with the York Lions will be available in an internet radio broadcast beginning at 1:55 p.m. through LSU Sports Properties and LSUsports.net. The broadcast will be available free of charge in the “GeauxZone” with the “Voice of the Tigers” Jim Hawthorne and Senior Associate Sports Information Director Kent Lowe calling the game. There will be no over-the-air broadcast of the contest.
The Tigers have been working hard this week to prepare some semblance of offense for the games, trying to integrate the veterans with six new players in the system. While Coach John Brady and the players are looking for wins, there are other points about the trip that will be equally as important.
“We want to win the game obviously,” said Brady, whose Tigers are making their second exhibition tour of this kind during his 11-year tenure at LSU, “but I need to see what some guys can do under game conditions, particularly our young players. They are going to have to play for us once the season starts and it gives them a chance to get in some game competition and see how they perform. I’m going to try to play everybody. Certainly you would like to win the game, but the most important thing is giving some players some game experience and getting it on tape so we can bring it back, see it, evaluate it and improve our team in that regard.”
The Tigers will probably be without point guard Garrett Temple for the trip as he continues to recover from a high left ankle sprain, originally suffered when Temple toured with an all-star team in China in late spring and aggravated during a pickup game this summer. Temple dressed for all the practices and continued to work out on the side in preparation for returning to the team when drills begin in mid-October.
While there is no set lineup for the opening exhibition game, the potential exists for the first five on the floor Saturday to include four of the returning players — senior Dameon Mason and juniors Tasmin Mitchell, Terry Martin and Chris Johnson — with Baton Rouge junior college transfer Marcus Thornton as potentially the other starter, having worked with the first unit for a good portion of the week.
“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 after a few days of practice is a little different preparation than it would be when you have six and a half weeks to get ready for your first game,” said 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 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.
Mitchell is LSU’s leading returning scorer after averaging 14.5 points per game and he is also the team’s leading rebounder at 5.9 boards a game. Terry Martin, playing just 24 games after missing the first semester because of NCAA transfer rules, averaged 10.5 points and hit 52 three-pointers to lead the team. LSU was 17-15 a year ago.
The game Saturday will be played on the Guelph campus at the Mitchell Athletics Centre and will be one of four NCAA teams that school will play over the Labor Day Weekend. Also in Ontario are Oral Roberts, Liberty and Morehead State (coached by former Tiger assistant Donnie Tyndall). Alabama is also traveling to Canada and will be playing four games in Ottawa along with Illinois and Villanova. The University of Florida made the exhibition trip to Canada last Labor Day.