BATON ROUGE — The LSU basketball Tigers, coming off final exams that ended earlier in the day, will put several winning streaks on the line when LSU hosts Grambling State in men’s college basketball Saturday night at 7 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers are 6-0 on the season with a nine-game winning streak the Maravich Center dating back to the final three games of last season and the Tigers put a 20-year home winning streak against Louisiana schools back on the line against Grambling. LSU has won 69 straight games at the Maravich Center against state schools dating to Dec. 8, 1988.
Tickets for the game are available online at LSUsports.net starting at $5. The LSU Athletics Ticket Office in the athletic administration building will be open from 1 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center through halftime. Besides the basketball tickets, fans can also purchase LSU football seats for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl game between LSU and Georgia Tech scheduled for New Year’s Eve in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome.
There is no TV for the game but the radio broadcast will be available on the LSU Sports Radio Network (New Country 100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge) and in the Geaux Zone with audio and video for subscribers.
LSU has not played since an 84-63 win over Cal State Fullerton on Dec. 2 while the team took off for final exams. Grambling, also off a week for finals, is 2-5 on the year and coming off a 77-44 loss at Louisiana Tech on Dec. 6.
“We’ve had two and a half days of intense practice,” Coach Trent Johnson said of getting his team ready again after three days off. “But I think that for the most part, they are tired of going up against one and another and Saturday (against Grambling) can’t come soon enough. I thought we were in a really good rhythm at the Cal State Fullerton game and the game prior to that against Troy and we need to get that back in a hurry.”
No changes are expected from the lineup LSU has put out on the floor in the first six games with Bo Spencer, Marcus Thornton and Garrett Temple at the guards, with Tasmin Mitchell at forward and Chris Johnson at center.
Thornton, after games of 32 and 24 points, leads the team in scoring at 17.2 points per game with Bo Spencer continuing to show tremendous improvement in his shooting range, averaging 12.0 points per game. Temple, despite playing the three guard position after three years primarily at point guard, is averaging 4.1 assists per game. Johnson is averaging 11.8 points per game, 8.3 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game, while Mitchell, just 30 points shy of 1,000 career points, is averaging 11.8 a game.
On returning to play Johnson said, “I talked to them about just concentrating and trying to enjoy this thing a bit and try to win the next possession on offense and defense and everything else will take care of itself if you learn how to compete. 7-0 beats 6-1 but I think they have a very good understanding of where we are at. At this point we are six games in and it beats the alternative.”
Grambling and the Tigers meet for only the second time in school history with LSU an easy winner in 1999. GSU first-year head coach Rick Duckett is familiar with LSU and the Southeastern Conference because he coached against the Tigers for seven years as an assistant at South Carolina.
Andrew Prestly is the leading scorer on the team, averaging 12.6 points per game and 6.1 rebounds. Ariece Perkins comes in averaging 11. Points and Ibrahim Kpaka at 10.7 points.
LSU concludes its season-opening eight game homestand on Wednesday night (Dec. 17) when Nicholls State comes to town for a 7 p.m. game and the first game televised this season on CST-HD.