BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team returns to the court after a week off as the Arkansas Razorbacks come to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for an 8 p.m. Southeastern Conference men’s basketball game.
The Tigers (7-11, 0-4) and Arkansas (13-5, 2-2) meet for the first of two times this season and the first meeting will be televised on ESPN Classic (Ch. 245 on Baton Rouge Cox Cable). This will be LSU’s first appearance in a live game on the network although classic LSU games in several sports have been shown in the past on the network.
The radio broadcast will be available on the LSU Sports Radio Network affiliates, in the “Geaux Zone” at LSUsports.net and on the SEC channels of XM Satellite Radio.
Tickets are available online through 6:30 p.m. Saturday at www.LSUsports.net. The upper concourse ticket windows at the Maravich Center will open at that time to sell game-night tickets. There will also be a giveaway of 2,500 rally towels.
In fact, LSU and Arkansas were like eight other teams in the league with a week off to review the early part of their conference seasons and both LSU and Arkansas will come to the Maravich Center looking for wins. The Tigers have lost seven straight while Arkansas has lost two straight conference tilts at home against South Carolina and on the road last Saturday at Georgia.
LSU in its last conference tilt was able to get its offense on track, scoring 76 points, the most points LSU had scored since totaling 88 against Southern in December. The Tigers defense could not keep up with the strong Vanderbilt offense, allowing 92 points. But it was a game that the LSU offense was able to sustain longer. Marcus Thornton has continued to be strong from the field, scoring 27 points each of the last two games and over 20 points each of the last three games, giving his 10 for the season. He has the longest string of 20 point games in the league.
His shooting touch and the better shooting of Garrett Temple has helped LSU get its shooting touch back, having shot over 47 percent in each of the last two games.
Anthony Randolph, the LSU freshman forward, also had the best rebounding game of any LSU player in the last few years with 19 boards as LSU was able to out rebound the Commodores.
Regarding how the team has improved in the previous three SEC games after scoring 39 points and shooting just 21 percent against Mississippi State in the opening 61-39 SEC loss, Coach Brady said Thursday at his press conference:
“I think we have played more aggressively offensively since that game,” Brady said. “Our shooting percentage has been good enough. It seems to me we have moments of play where we are not consistent in our scoring. It also seems to me in the last eight to ten minutes of the game we have a hard time making consecutive stops. I don’t know if that is because of personnel, lack of depth, inexperience or whatever the case may be.
“Down the stretch, we haven’t been able to get the number of necessary stops we need against quality teams. The last few days of practice that has been our main focus. We have been focusing on close outs, stopping double-penetration, helping recover, keeping teams from getting easy baskets around our goal and rebounding the ball. These were our concerns early in the year too when the team was whole. Our concerns were defending the goal and rebounding the ball.
“Now with the numbers it has become more evident of where we are with that. I think we stabilized the rebounding a little bit, but we have still been giving up too many easy baskets around the goal. Hopefully we can correct and stabilize that part of the defensive game a little bit.”
Arkansas is led in scoring by Sonny Weems at 13.5 points a game with Patrick Beverley (11.7) and Charles Thomas (10.7) also in double figures.
After Saturday’s game, LSU will be on the road for the entire next week, traveling to Auburn on Wednesday and playing in Tuscaloosa at Alabama next Saturday (Feb. 2). LSU’s next home game is not until Feb. 9 when the Tigers take on Tennessee at the Maravich Center.