BATON ROUGE – The LSU Tigers look to keep pace and positioning in the Southeastern Conference race as it travels to Tuscaloosa to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide at a sold-out Coleman Coliseum on Saturday afternoon.
The game will be televised on ESPNU at 1 p.m. CT with Mike Morgan and Joe Dean Jr. on the call, while Jim Hawthorne, Ricky Blanton and studio host Kevin Ford will call the game on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Eagle 98.1 FM the flagship affiliate in Baton Rouge).
The Tigers are 4-2 in the SEC (11-7 overall) and tied for third with Florida and Kentucky, one half game behind second place South Carolina (4-1). Alabama enters the game at 1-4 in the league and 10-7 overall with a 6-2 record in the Coliseum. LSU is 1-4 on opponent’s home courts this season.
LSU is coming off a 71-57 road loss at No. 10 Texas A&M on Tuesday, while on the same night Alabama was losing at Auburn, 83-77. The Tigers have one SEC road win at Vanderbilt back on Jan. 2, while the Tide has one home conference win and that was against at the time an undefeated South Carolina team.
Against the Aggies, Tim Quarterman led LSU with 12 points while Ben Simmons and Craig Victor II each had 10 points. But for the third time on the road this season, the Tigers struggled getting the ball to drop, shooting under 40 percent and making 19 turnovers.
Alabama senior guard Retin Obasohan led the Crimson Tide with a career-high 27 points in the game against Auburn. Obasohan leads the team in scoring average at 14.5 points per game for the season and 18.0 points over the last six games. Shannon Hale comes in at 10.6 points per game.
The Crimson Tide is coached by Avery Johnson, who played at Southern University and had a 14-year playing career in the NBA before becoming an NBA head coach and later ESPN analyst. This is his first year as a college head coach.
“He’s got a team that has been very competitive and has played extremely hard,” said LSU Coach Johnny Jones when asked about Johnson’s coaching style in college. “They’ve had some success. When you talk about knocking off a team that’s undefeated and ranked in our league — they were one of the few teams in our league and maybe the country that was undefeated at that time — to play the way that they did on that evening says a lot about his team and how competitive they’ve been. They’ve been really close in a lot of games this year. It speaks to his passion and the way that he coaches. You know he does a great job. He’s been Coach of the Year in the NBA. I’m sure he’s excited about what he’s doing with this college team as well.
LSU’s freshman star Simmons continues to lead the team in several categories, averaging 19.4 points, 12.8 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game. He has 14 double doubles which is the best in the SEC and the best among freshmen in D1. Keith Hornsby averages 13.6 points a game and Victor is at 13.2 points and 6.6 rebounds per game.
After the Saturday road contest, LSU returns home for a week of games, hosting Georgia at 8 p.m. on Tuesday (8 p.m., ESPN) and then the SEC/Big 12 day of games for the two leagues is Saturday, Jan. 30, with LSU hosting nationally-ranked Oklahoma at 4 p.m. on ESPN. Both games will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network.
Follow updates on the LSU-Alabama game from Tuscaloosa on Twitter @LSUBasketball and at www.Facebook.com/LSUBasketball.