BATON ROUGE — The Southeastern Conference’s hottest two men’s basketball teams meet Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center as the league-leading 23rd-ranked LSU Fighting Tigers play host to the surging Auburn Tigers.
There is no television for the game but the broadcast will be available on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network (New Country 100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge) and in the Geaux Zone at LSUsports.net. Tickets are available beginning at $14 for the game online at LSUsports.net or beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the upper ticket windows of the Maravich Center. Youth tickets (ages 3-12) are available for $5.
As a special promotion, any fan showing a baseball ticket from Saturday’s 2 p.m. LSU-Villanova game can purchase an upper level ticket for just $5.
LSU is the three-game leader in the SEC at 10-1, winners of seven straight games and 10 overall in league play. The Tigers lead Mississippi State in the Western Division and Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina in the Eastern Division. Auburn, winner of four straight, is nipping at State’s heels at 6-5. LSU needs a magic number of two over all the teams to clinch a tie for the league title and entering the weekend, 13 wins would be an outright winner. That’s a magic number that could very obviously fluctuate as the final games are being played in the next two-plus weeks.
LSU is 22-4 overall, 10-1 in the league after a rallying 72-69 win at Arkansas on Wednesday in which the Tigers had to come from 18 down in the first half and nine down three times in the second half. Auburn is 17-9 and 6-5 in the league coming off a strong 79-63 win at Georgia on Wednesday night.
“I know one thing,” LSU Coach Trent Johnson said to the media Thursday. “We need to start playing better. The first half was pretty ugly (at Arkansas). I don’t want to take anything away from Arkansas, but we shot it quick at times and didn’t make good decisions and didn’t play well in the first half. We found a way to win the game though, which was good. Now we’re playing a very good basketball team that is very similar to Mississippi State in how they stretch you around the perimeter and are coming off a five-or-six game stretch in which they’ve played very well. We have to play better basketball.”
Korvotney Barber is one of the leaders for the Tigers inside averaging 12.6 points and 9.5 rebounds for the year, but averaging a double double in league play. Guard DeWayne Reed is averaging 13.1 points per game and Tay Waller, 12.4 points. LSU for the last two games has gotten 20-plus point games out of both junior Tasmin Mitchell and Marcus Thornton. Both are averaging over 20 points in league play with Thornton in second place in both overall average and league play.
This late in the conference schedule with just five games remaining the Tigers will face Auburn for the first time after completing play with the other four members of the Western Division. LSU is 7-1 so far in the Division, having lost only the conference opener in early January at Alabama. Only the two Auburn games remain for the Tigers in divisional play. Auburn is 4-1 in the Division with all five games left against Western Division teams.
The Tigers will also play at home on Fat Tuesday as part of ESPN’s Super Tuesday package as Florida comes to the Maravich Center for an 8 p.m. tipoff. Tickets in the upper level for that game are available at LSUsports.net for just $5.