BATON ROUGE ? LSU hopes that a return home for a three-game home stand will be the medicine the men’s basketball team needs to get back on track when the Tigers host Utah Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The game will be regionally televised as part of the ESPN SEC package on Comcast Sports Southeast live and will be shown in Baton Rouge and many parts of the region at 11 p.m. on same-day tape delay on Cox Sports Television (Ch. 37 in Baton Rouge). The telecast is also available on ESPN Full Court subscription package.
The radio 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 online at LSUsports.net at the upper concourse ticket windows beginning at 5:30 p.m.
The teams are different than when they met early in the 2009 year at Salt Lake City, a game Utah won, 91-61. But both are coming in on different roads with Utah winning handily, 69-47, over Texas-San Antonio, while LSU was on the losing end of a 25-point, 89-64, loss at Xavier on Tuesday. LSU’s loss was stunning in many respects in that LSU was dominated by 17 on the boards, including a first half when Xavier had 15 offensive boards and LSU had just 15 total rebounds.
“Utah is a lot better basketball team than their record shows,” said LSU Coach Trent Johnson. “You look at playing Oklahoma State, Michigan, Illinois and on and on, they are a basketball team in this fact ? they lost key personnel from last year. I am impressed with their team with how hard they play when they are down and how they stay in a situation with a positive attitude and mental toughness. They try to compete at a high level on every possession.
“It’s no different than the Xavier game and it’s no different than a lot of teams we play,” Johnson said. “We’ve both lost a lot of the same type of basketball players and I’ve got to believe that comes out with the mental frame of mind to compete hard on each possession and also execute their game plan is the team that is going to have some success. They have a very experienced backcourt. We need to come out with a frame of mind that we are going to compete very hard. We are not in position where we can take possessions off.”
The Utes have three players in double figures with Carlon Brown averaging 13.5 points per game with Luka Drca, who had a career high of 19 against UTSA, averaging 10.7 and Marshall Henderson at 10.5 a contest. Sophomore 7-3 center David Foster is ranked fourth nationally, averaging 4.3 blocks per game.
LSU is led offensively by Tasmin Mitchell, scoring 17.3 points per game and 9.2 boards a game, both figures third best in the SEC. Storm Warren‘s 10.3 rebound average is still tied for the lead in the league. Chris Bass leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio with 43 assists and just 13 turnovers. Bo Spencer is averaging 16.9 points per game.
Jim Boylen is in his third season as the head coach at Utah after serving as an assistant at Michigan State and over a decade experience in the NBA. LSU’s Johnson served at one time as a former assistant coach at Utah, on Lynn Archibald’s staff from 1986-89.
Following the Saturday game, it will be a quick turnaround as LSU’s puts its 79-game winning streak at home against Louisiana schools on Monday night as McNeese State comes to town for a 7 p.m. non-televised contest. The Tigers open SEC play to close out the three-game home stand on Saturday, Jan. 9 at 4 p.m. against the University of Alabama.