BATON ROUGE – The LSU Tigers and the Auburn Tigers meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with both teams looking for their first Southeastern Conference victory.
It will be a big night at the PMAC as it is the first time this semester the LSU students are back in the stands in full force as school resumed on Tuesday.
As always, admission to the PMAC is free of charge for students with a valid student ID. It is student point night and one luck student is guaranteed to walk out of the building with their Spring 2010 tuition paid.
All students need to do is enter through the normal student game (upper southeast) and pick up a scratch off card. Each card has a unique number and the winning number will be announced during the game. The Tuition Giveaway is sponsored by McDonald’s.
Also, the pre-game student lounge will be open in the Southwest corridor and presented by Acme Oyster House. Students are invited to arrive for the 5:30 p.m. opening of the gates and relax in the student lounge, featuring free food from Acme Oyster House.
The game will be televised by the over-the-air syndicated SEC Network (WBXH in Baton Rouge; WUPL in New Orleans, KLAF in Lafayette and KMSS in Shreveport; compete listing at the bottom of this story) and 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 GeauxZone at LSUsports.net.
LSU is 9-8 on the season, 0-3 in the SEC, while Auburn is 9-9 and 0-3 in the SEC as well.
LSU lost on the road last week at South Carolina (67-58) and Florida (72-58), but played with more aggressiveness and more determination for parts of the game, but now needs to continue to learn to sustain that drive and passion for 40 minutes.
“I thought there were a lot of positives for 20-25 minutes,” Coach Trent Johnson said of the Florida game. “There was a separation there where I think they went up 12-13 points (in the first half) and we went to a man defense and we had Eddie (Ludwig), Aaron (Dotson), Garrett (Green) Bo (Spencer) and Tas (Mitchell) and from a man stand point I thought defensively we did a good job to get ourselves back in the game. There has been a constant improvement on our being able to handle an attack pressure. We are getting better in those aspects.”
Tasmin Mitchell had 17 points and nine rebounds to lead LSU in the contest. He remains fourth in the league in scoring average at 16.9 points per game and 9.4 rebounds a game, second in the league.
Auburn is led by guards DeWayne Reed at 16.2 points per game and Frankie Sullivan at 13.7 points per outing. Also scoring in double figures for Auburn is Lucas Hargrove at 12.9 average and Tay Waller at 11.5.
“Auburn is coming off a tough loss to obviously one of the best teams in the country, Kentucky. There speed, their explosiveness is impressive,” said Johnson. “They really spread the floor well and attack you four-on-one. (Senior Guard Tay) Waller and (Senior Guard DeWayne) Reed caused us a lot of problems here and there last year so obviously the most important thing for us is being able to limit their transition opportunities, close out on the threes which is going be hard to do because of their speed and overall quickness and try to keep this thing in the half court.”
Tickets for the game are available online at LSUsports.net starting at $14 and youth tickets (ages 3-12) are available for $5. LSU also plays at home in the Maravich Center at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Coach Trent Johnson
Media Session
Opening Comments
“Auburn is coming off a tough loss to obviously one of the best teams in the country, Kentucky. There speed, their explosiveness is impressive. They really spread the floor well and attack you four-on-one. (Senior Guard Tay) Waller and (Senior Guard DeWayne) Reed caused us a lot of problems here and there last year so obviously the most important thing for us is being able to limit their transition opportunities, close out on the threes which is going be hard to do because of their speed and overall quickness and try to keep this thing in the half court.
“Going back to us in terms of Florida, I thought there were a lot of positives for 20-25 minutes. There was a separation there where I think they went up 12-13 points (in the first half) and we went to a man defense and we had Eddie (Ludwig), Aaron (Dotson), Garrett (Green) Bo (Spencer) and Tas (Mitchell) and from a man stand point I thought defensively we did a good job to get ourselves back in the game. There has been a constant improvement on our being able to handle an attack pressure. We are getting better in those aspects. There are still a couple of places where we are breaking down and maybe a lot of it contributing to our inability in a zone to react to the ball and have quickness to the ball is rebounding. This is a team (auburn) where we are predominately going to have to go man and push Tas back down to the four because Hargrove is a undersized 4-3 who shoots and then basically try to handle their pressure and keep the thing on the half court.”
Do they press as much as the first three (SEC ) teams do?
“It’s different. It’s more of a run and jump out of a man and they’ll on the half court they’ll do anything they can out of a man to speed you up. The thing is when you look at the shooting percentages from the 3 which are down, but when you look at them on tape you see these guys are shooting with a high level of confidence and continue to be aggressive which concerns me. You look at us and our shooting percentages which are extremely low but our guys aren’t shooting the basketball with a level of confidence at times. That’s a scary thing when you start talking about a team like Auburn. But again we just have to continue to grind and worry about the next possession offensively and defensively and worry about just trying to compete at a high level which we are getting better at versus superior skilled at times teams and not worry about that.”
How important is getting the first win in the league?
“It’s the process they have to understand, the where and the why we are in the situation we are in. That’s more important than if you are on a two-game slide or a three-game slide. It’s understanding why we are there and then being mature enough to know that if we win will we do the things that led to the victory and know they are going to be right back there. People say young and inexperienced teams have that problem, but I’ve had a tendency to dwell all along on the mental toughness factor. The thing is that when we start to drop in our defense, we start to drop in our rebounding and that’s where we need to keep getting better.”
Younger guys – Do you look for development in intangibles or passing, shooting the ball … Which is more important?
“The intangibles are always the most important and that’s your ability to understand what we are doing, be very competitive and give us something defensively. Some coaches, the better and more talented players the offense will take care of itself … So the intangibles are thing I’ve always believed in. That gives you an opportunity to play and be in games and then you can win games. For us, our shooting percentage we’ve all seen who is being double teamed and who is not. If those guys take good shots within their comfort zone, within our philosophy it is going to happen. It’s the intangibles, it’s the fundamentals of the game. Garrett Green has been around here three years and it’s nice to see him now understanding physicality and see him do that on the road against Florida and him play through that is a positive. For me and they know, it’s about learn how to play, learn how to do those things to help us win games. There is no talk of two weeks from now or three weeks from now. From day one I’ve said you can be oh for the world but you get to conference tournament time and you play well, you can continue to play.”
Mental fatigue possible?
“Without question when you have a bunch of young players. Dennis Harris and Eddie Ludwig are great kids, but you see the speed of the game now because Eddie was playing high school last year and Dennis wasn’t playing. See the speed of the game along with not winning, because sometimes winning can hide deficiencies regardless of what you want to say, but for us as a staff we’ve got to tell them to fight through, but it’s hard. I tell them all the time and every team I’ve been affiliated with it’s hard to overachieve and maximizing what you have. That’s what is hard.”
You talked last Monday about the team lacking an edge? Did you see that on the road
“I cannot fault our mental preparation and our ability to want to compete. We were as good as we have been all year with the exception of maybe on the road at Washington State. In terms of an edge, yea. Again, these guys care, they really care. It would be different if they didn’t care. They are nice kids. This is the next part. It happens with maturity, maybe it happens with strength. You didn’t see Harris after going against Macklin, you didn’t see (Harris) back away. He went back and responded and he tried to fight. Eddie tried to fight. The veterans Tas and Bo they’ve been through their share of wars. Alex (Farrer), it’s killing him inside because of his experience with his understanding of how to play basketball. He understands what the young guys are going through because he was a young guy and had a redshirt year and he was around when they went to the Final Four and had a lot of talent.”