BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team, riding a four-game win streak in which defense has been a victory constant, will host undefeated and nationally-ranked Marquette Monday night in an 8 p.m. game at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The first 3,000 fans will receive bobble heads of legendary LSU and NBA star, Bob Pettit. Pettit, who was a member of the 1953 NCAA Final Four team before a legendary NBA career with the St. Louis Hawks, is one of four players to have their men’s basketball number hung in the rafters of the Maravich Center.
Tickets are available online at LSUtix.net and during business hours at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office. The upper concourse ticket windows at the Maravich Center will open at 6:30 p.m.
The game will be televised on many of the national Fox Sports Net affiliates, including Fox Sports South, Fox Sports Southwest, Fox Sports Houston, Fox Sports Wisconsin and Fox College Sports with Dave Neal and Larry Conley on the call. Jim Hawthorne, Ricky Blanton and host Kevin Ford will have the call on the LSU Sports Radio Network (New Country 100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge) and the audio call will also be available to subscribers of the Geaux Zone at LSUsports.net.
LSU is 7-3 after holding Houston (59-58), Rutgers (55-50), both on the road, and Boise (64-45) and UC Irvine (66-59, both at home, to under 60 points. It marked the first time LSU has held four straight opponents under 60 since late December 2006-early January 2007 when LSU held five straight opponents under 60.
Marquette is 10-0 and presently ranked 11th in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today polls. New polls will come out on Monday prior to the game and the Golden Eagles could pop into the top 10 in the hours prior to game time.
LSU is 0-6 at home in Trent Johnson‘s four years at LSU against nationally-ranked opponents with LSU’s last win at home against a nationally-ranked team a 66-56 win over No. 3 Florida in February 2007.
Marquette comes into the game off a 93-72 victory Saturday in Milwaukee over Northern Colorado. Five players finished with double figures, led by freshman Todd Mayo’s career-best 22 points. LSU win over UC Irvine was led by junior center Justin Hamilton who had his first LSU double double with 14 points and 11 rebounds. LSU had 50 rebounds in the game and 20 offensive boards for the second time this season. Hamilton leads the Southeastern Conference in offensive rebounds at 3.6 a game.
Among the accolades LSU Coach Trent Johnson offered when talking about Marquette Friday in his media session was this: “They are an ‘attack-oriented’ basketball team. Two of their players that are leading them in scoring are seniors. They’re both All-American candidates. They’re good basketball players. For this team, with the exception of the three freshmen that we have, all of our guys have played teams of this caliber. They’ve seen what it looks like. They’ve seen what it feels like. Our concern is that we make sure that we go into this game and do what we’re capable of. When they make their runs, whether its defense or offense, we need to stay poised and not get away from the game plan.”
Both teams will be missing players – sophomore off guard Andre Stringer for LSU and junior center Chris Otule with an ACL injury for Marquette. Otule’s injury came in the opening minutes of the Jimmy V Classic in New York (12/6). Stringer fainted in practice prior to the Dec. 10 Boise State game and is still out and expected to undergo more tests throughout this coming week. He is not expected back until after the Christmas break at the earliest.
Following Monday’s game LSU will close out the pre-Christmas portion of the schedule with a 7 p.m. game Thursday in Denton, Texas, against the University of North Texas. LSU’s next home game is Dec. 29 at 6 p.m. against Grambling State University.
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