BATON ROUGE – For the second time in the last two months, the LSU men’s basketball team has begun daily team practice sessions.
In August, the practices were to prepare for an exhibition tour of five games in Australia.
Monday, it was the first of 30 practices that will lead to the start of the 2015-16 season on Nov. 13 against McNeese State at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers practiced for right at two hours working on several fundamentals both offensively and defensively with several 2-on-2, 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 drills before working on full team drills in the last portions of practice.
“I thought it was a really good, solid first day of practice,” said fourth year LSU Head Coach Johnny Jones. “I thought we had great effort from all of our guys. At the same time, having the opportunities we did earlier this summer and with the individual skill work (once school resumed), I thought we were able to come out and do a lot of things well in this practice. So we are really pleased and look forward to hopefully expanding on it (Tuesday).”
Two players missed the practice with minor leg injuries (freshman Ben Simmons and junior Brian Bridgewater), but that both were held out for precautionary measures with plenty of time to get ready.
“We are keeping a couple of guys out for precautionary reasons making sure they can heal up so we can get them back at 100 percent so we aren’t aggravating anything because we do have a little time on our hands to deal with things. If this was in season, they could be in position where they could possible play, but right now we wanted to make sure they are full go before we put them out there on the floor in practice,” Jones said.
Jones liked what he saw defensively of his Tiger squad.
“I thought defensively through our shell drills I thought we did a good job,” Jones said. “I thought Elbert Robinson probably had one of his best practices since he’s been here and we are looking to making sure he continues to improve on that as well.”
Of the opening practice senior Keith Hornsby liked how things progressed.
“It feels good,” Hornsby said. “We had these types of practices before we went to Australia so in the back of our minds we realize we’ve been here before, but it’s a little bit different because we are approaching our ‘American’ season. You could just feel the excitement out there. I think the meeting before the practice helped our attitude during practice. We really took to the saying of ‘If we really compete against each other, we will make each other better at a faster pace.’ I feel that was a good start to that saying (Monday).”
The Tigers will practice through Friday before taking the weekend off.
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