BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers will open exhibition play Thursday night in the Maravich Center at 7 p.m. against NAIA opposition, the Belhaven Blazers of Jackson, Miss.
Belhaven, a member of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, also happens to be the alma mater of LSU head coach John Brady and assistant coach John Treloar.
There will be no live over-the-air television or radio for the contest. The scoreboard video will be available in the “GeauxZone” at www.LSUsports.net.
Tickets for the contest are available online at www.LSUsports.net and at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office during the day Thursday. The upper ticket windows at the Maravich Center will open at 5:30 p.m. and tickets for the contest will be $5. LSU students are admitted to the contest free of charge with valid LSU ID.
The Tigers are anxious to face outside competition after practicing for just short of three weeks. However, despite that, it will be the earliest exhibition game by an LSU men’s basketball team in history, eclipsing by two days the Nov. 3, 1978 exhibition game with Australia.
With the quick start to the season, Coach John Brady is hoping that the Tigers’ trip to Canada over the Labor Day weekend will pay dividends. The Tigers not only had three games against Canadian schools, but also had the benefits of a week of practice prior to going to Toronto in which LSU and Coach Brady established its offensive principles for a team that will be more perimeter oriented than LSU teams fans have seen over the last five years.
With regards to goals for the game, Coach Brady has a plan in mind, even in the exhibition season. “I want to do the things that we are going to have to do to beat quality teams in the league. I don’t want to come out here and press all over the floor and play a game that we aren’t going to play against better competition. We are going to try to do the things that will lend us to winning games against the people in our league and try to get into the game what we have practiced. I want to see if we can execute and those type of things as opposed to going one-on-one all the time and not even playing like we’ve practiced.
Belhaven is coming off its season opener on Tuesday night, a 117-81 win over Blue Mountain College, a team playing its first ever men’s basketball game. Dax Miller, a preseason all-GCAC selection and Corey Whiting led Belhaven with 19 points each, while Iman Walcott had 14 points.
This will be the third straight year that LSU has played a GCAC team as one of its two exhibition games after hosting LSU-Shreveport and Louisiana College. This is the first time the college team has been the first exhibition game as this year LSU will play its annual matchup with the EA Sports All-Star team of former college players next Tuesday (Nov. 6).
The coaching staff has looked at several lineup combinations over the last several days in practice and in the scrimmages this past Saturday and Tuesday but it appears that the lineup will include three veterans ? First Team preseason All-SEC Tasmin Mitchell, Collis Temple and Terry Martin ? along with freshman Anthony Randolph and junior college transfer Marcus Thornton.
“We are going to play everyone,” said Brady, entering his 11th season as the LSU head coach. “I’m not dead set on a rotation. I have some ideas and I’m going to try some things with that and see how we do. I’m certainly going to try to give everyone an equal opportunity to play and show what they can do in the course of a game and see if they understand what execution is as we play.”
Thornton averaged a team-high 26 points a game in Canada and is a three-point threat from anywhere on the perimeter. Martin will be playing his first full season with the Tigers after becoming eligible at mid-season following his transfer from Texas Tech. He led the team a year ago with 52 three-point field goals, a number that should be eclipsed if Thornton gets on a roll from outside the arc.
“I think we can score the ball. I think we can run the floor and I think we pass the ball well,” Brady said of the Canadian trip. “I think we can shoot the ball pretty well from the perimeter. The things we have set goals to improve upon are defending around the goal and our rebounding collectively as a team. If we can sustain those two parts of the game throughout the year then I think we have a chance to have a quality team.”
The Tigers open the regular season on Monday, Nov. 12, against Southeastern Louisiana at the Maravich Center. Tickets for all non-conference games in November and December are on sale at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office and online at www.LSUsports.net. Also on sale are the 3-game pick ?em packs of tickets in which fans can buy tickets for any three games during the 2007-08 season. There is also this year a new Family Pack that includes four tickets, four hot dogs and four cokes for any regular season game for $50 that can also be purchased at the ticket office.