BATON ROUGE – After close to a month of official practices, several scrimmages and hours and hours of individual work alone in the practice facility, the 2011-12 edition of the LSU men’s basketball team makes its debut Saturday at noon in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center against Nicholls State University.
Admission to the game is free of charge. Season ticket holders have received their ticket packets which included a free ticket for their normal seats in the arena. The game is part of the second ever football-basketball doubleheader on North Stadium Drive on the LSU campus as following the basketball game, the No. 1-ranked Tiger football team will host Western Kentucky at 6 p.m.
In honor of the day’s theme to “wear purple” for the homecoming activities, the LSU basketball team will wear their purple jerseys at home for the first time since the days of Coach Dale Brown.
There will be no live television broadcast for the game. The game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network with host Kevin Ford and Jim Hawthorne and former Tiger Ricky Blanton on the call (100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge) and the scoreboard video of the game will be streamed as a free preview of the Geaux Zone at www.LSUsportsnet/live.
Gates open at 10:30 a.m. and there will be a free shuttle service picking up fans for the basketball game starting two hours prior to the game from the Hayfield and Levee Lots off River Road. The service will also run for an hour following the game with the pickup spot on the practice facility side of the Maravich Center.
“(The game) can’t get here soon enough,” said LSU Coach Trent Johnson, who enters his fourth season at LSU. “We have made some really good improvements. I think there is great improvement in our ability to make plays amongst ourselves, individually and collectively. Probably more importantly, our ability to take care of the ball has improved. That is going to help us stay in games as well as win games.”
Nicholls became the first Louisiana school since 1988 to defeat the Tigers at home a year ago, winning a 62-53 decision after outscoring LSU, 41-28, in the second half.
“I don’t get caught up on who we play, or when we play on any given year,” said Johnson. “My whole thing has been about competition. Basketball has so much parity, and it has been like this for the last six or seven years. You need to be ready to compete at a high level. Last year was last year, and this year is this year. When you compete at a high level, you will win your share of games.”
Nicholls is coached by J. P. Piper, entering his eighth season in Thibodaux. The Colonels in their only public exhibition was a 73-69 winner over the University of Mobile.