BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team, off a strong overall performance against South Alabama Sunday in Mobile, looks to conclude the first portion of its basketball season with a victory Tuesday night as it hosts Houston at 7 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
This will be the final game for LSU before an 11-day break for school Dead Week and Final Exams. LSU will next play after Tuesday on Dec. 11 against Central Michigan.
Tickets for Tuesday’s game are on sale at online for $14 for adults and $5 for youth (ages 3-12). LSU Students are admitted free of charge with student ID and this will be the final pre-game student lounge with food and drink for this semester.
There is no television for the game but the game will be broadcast on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network (WTGE New Country 100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge).
Also for the second straight year, Coach Trent Johnson and his staff will be wearing red ribbons supporting World Aids Day (which is Wed., Dec. 1). As LSU fans will remember, last summer, Coach Johnson spent 10 days at the Nkomazi Rush Mission in South Africa teaching coaches about the game of basketball so they then can teach youngsters the fundamentals of the game. The Mission if part of the TRIAD Trust (Training to Reduce the Incidence of Aids-Related Death) program started by his friend and former Stanford assistant soccer coach Sarah Kate Noftsinger.
During the game, three videos produced by Megan O’Leary, an ESPN programming coordinator and TRIAD Volunteer, will be shown featuring footage shot this past summer in South Africa with Coach Johnson and an on-campus video shoot from this past September.
Both teams come into the game at 4-2, with LSU having won two straight with Houston coming off a 79-63 loss at TCU on Saturday.
LSU is coming off its first win on an opponent’s home court since Feb. 28, 2009 and shot 70 percent in the 80-65 win over South Alabama from three-point range (12-of-17) for the first time since 1989. It was the ninth time in the Trent Johnson era that LSU has shot over 50 percent from the field and LSU is 9-0 in those games.
Houston has wins over Nicholls State (63-62 ot), Alcorn State (88-68), NW Oklahoma State (81-58) and Louisiana-Lafayette (78-65) with its other loss coming at Louisiana Tech. The Cougars are under the direction of James Dickey who is in his first year as head coach at Houston. He previously served a decade as the head coach at Texas Tech (1992-01).
“This basketball team that we play (Tuesday) night, the Houston Cougars, is a very solid team. They are a group that won their conference tournament and were an NCAA tournament team last year,” said LSU Coach Trent Johnson. “We scrimmaged them last season over there that was closed to the public, and they handled us pretty well. They are very solid defensively, they have good perimeter players that are good defenders and scorers and they have a traditional post player that can play inside and out. Coach Dickey, who I am very familiar with when he was at Texas Tech and while I was at Rice, has obviously been coaching for a long time and does a heck of a job.”
LSU will be looking to play more of a complete basketball game and continue to get the strong performance out of players like Andre Stringer (16.7 ppg), Ralston Turner (12.2 ppg) and Aaron Dotson (11.7 ppg).
“We’re going to have to play really well. We’re going to have to put together two good halves of basketball in terms of defending the ball, rebounding and taking care of it. The last two times out we’ve done a decent job in assist to turnover ratio in the first half, but then we’ve gotten careless and sloppy in the second half. We need to clean those things up. We’re looking forward it,” said Johnson.
This will be the first meeting of the teams since 2005, which ended a six-year run of games. Houston leads the overall series, 9-5.
At halftime of the contest, the winner of the annual Alpha Kappa Psi talent contest – Breanne Strawn – will perform. Alpha Kappa Psi is a professional business fraternity on campus.
LSU Basketball can be followed on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LSUBasketball and on Twitter @LSUBasketball and @LSUCoachJohnson.
Head Coach Trent Johnson
Opening Statement…
“This basketball team that we play (Tuesday) night, the Houston Cougars, is a very solid team. They are a group that won their conference tournament and were an NCAA tournament team last year. We scrimmaged them last season over there that was closed to the public, and they handled us pretty well. It was very unfortunate because that is when lost Alex Farrer for the year to a knee injury.
“They are very solid defensively, they have good perimeter players that are good defenders and scorers and they have a traditional post player that can play inside and out. Coach Dickey, who I am very familiar with when he was at Texas Tech and while I was at Rice, has obviously been coaching for a long time and does a heck of a job.
“We’re going to have to play really well. We’re going to have to put together two good halves of basketball in terms of defending the ball, rebounding and taking care of it. The last two times out we’ve done a decent job in assist to turnover ratio in the first half, but then we’ve gotten careless and sloppy in the second half. We need to clean those things up. We’re looking forward it.
“These two basketball programs, when you stop and think about some of the players that they’ve had over the history of their program, are pretty impressive. There are three collegiate teams that have three players all time (NBA) top 50. Obviously, we have Shaquille O’Neal, Bob Pettit and Pete Maravich. North Carolina has Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Billy Cunningham. Houston has Elvin Hayes, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. That speaks volumes about the kinds of players that have been in and out of each program.
“We’re going to watch video later (Monday), have a quick walk through defensively about what University of Houston does and then we need to clean up some things offensively.”
On Andre Stringer…
“Basketball is a game of angles. He has a high basketball IQ, plus he is extremely coachable, he works extremely hard and has great range. When you are 5-foot-9 and you shoot the ball from 30 feet with ease, than that stretches the floor. From there on it is his ability to put the ball on the floor, go by a guy, make decisions and make other guys better. Andre is a good basketball player.”
How offense is running…
“The system is predicated on going inside than out and utilizing the talents and personnel that you have. I’ve been running it since I’ve been a head coach. I’ve had three or four all league posts, three or four all league perimeter players and three or four all league wings. I am not worried about Malcolm (White) and Storm (Warren). What we have to take into consideration is sometimes Malcolm is not the best matchup when he is chasing undersized wing players. That takes away from his ability to be physical. There is nothing wrong with Storm. He’s had ankle trouble and has been in foul trouble.”