BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team went through its first weekend of practice under new coach Trent Johnson with four practices over a three-day period.
The team practiced once on Friday night, twice including some five-of-five scrimmage work on Saturday and a Sunday practice. A majority of the time by Coach Johnson and assistants Donny Guerinoni, Keith Richard and Brent Scott was spent on things such as defensive positioning, screening along with shooting and free throw drills.
“I thought the main thing we got accomplished was (the players) got an idea how committed that we’re going to have to be on the defensive end, the rebounding end and taking care of the ball. We’ve got a long ways to go. As I mentioned about two weeks ago, I knew it was going to be a situation that once it got tough, and there was some adversity, their character was going to reveal itself. But again, the good thing about it is it is early and we’ve got to get it corrected.”
The Tigers this week will have their first sessions with the media on Tuesday since practice started at the local media day and Coach Johnson and Garrett Temple will represent LSU at SEC media day on Thursday in Birmingham, Ala. Coach Johnson will make radio and television appearances on Monday, appearing on Jordy Hultberg’s morning radio show on WSKR (1210 AM) at 7:30 a.m. and he will be the featured guest on Lee Feinswog’s Sports Monday show on Cox Cable 4 at 6:30 p.m.
LSU’s first public appearance as a team will be Oct. 28 for the Purple-Gold scrimmage at the Maravich Assembly Center. Admission is free for the event. Doors open at 6 p.m. that evening with the scrimmage portion to begin at approximately 6:30 p.m. The team will sign autographs at the end of the evening and posters and schedule cards will be available as well.
Season tickets remain on sale for the record home schedule of 21 games that begins on Nov. 15 at 1 p.m. against Jackson State in the front end of the first-ever basketball-football doubleheader held at the PMAC and Tiger Stadium. LSU football will host Troy that evening at 7 p.m. Season tickets begin as low as $100.