BATON ROUGE – The LSU Tigers start the second week of the regular season Tuesday night facing the Memphis Tigers at 6 p.m. CT at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU, ranked 22nd in the latest AP Top 25 poll released earlier Monday, is 2-0 after wins over Southeastern Louisiana and UNCG, while Memphis is 1-0 after having opened with a 76-61 win over Tennessee Tech last Tuesday.
The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network with Dave Neal and Dan Bradshaw on the call with the radiocast with the Voice of the Tigers Chris Blair and John Brady on the call (Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and free online at www.LSUsports.net/live.
Tickets for the game are available online at LSUtix.net and all day on Tuesday at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office. The ticket windows on the upper concourse of the Maravich Center will open at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
It is possible that it could be a guard-heavy, faster paced game with Memphis wanting to press and both teams expected to start three guards in the game. LSU will go with three point guards it has started in the first two games – sophomore Tremont Waters (15.0 ppg, 6.0 apg), junior Skylar Mays (10.0 ppg, 2.5 apg) and freshman Ja’vonte Smart (11.5 ppg, 1.5 apg).
Memphis should go with freshman Tyler Harris (0 points, 3 assists in the opener), freshman Alex Lomax (8 points, 4 assists) and senior Jeremiah Martin (18 points, 4 assists). Senior forward Kyvon Davenport was the big scorer for Memphis in the Tennessee Tech win with 30 points and 10 rebounds.
LSU forward Naz Reid led LSU with 29 points in the win over UNCG on 11-of-14 shooting, hitting 4-of-6 from the arc.
This is the second part of a home-and-home series between the two schools and it could be the first of two meetings this month as the teams could meet Thanksgiving weekend on the final day of the AdvoCare Invitational at Disney World. The teams are in opposite brackets but could match up depending on the first two games in that event.
Last year in a 71-61 victory in Memphis, Waters had 18 points and eight assists to lead LSU, while Mays had 14 points. Davenport had 17 points and 11 rebounds for Memphis with Martin getting 13.
This is the eighth time the team have met with Memphis up 4-3 in the series. Two of the more prominent games in the series came in 1986 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at the Maravich Center when Anthony Wilson came out of a scrum to hit the winning shot. The other came in Maui in 1992 when new Memphis coach Penny Hardaway scored 20 points in the 1992 Maui Invitational against the Tigers, including the go-ahead field goal with 17 seconds left to win 70-66.
Memphis was 21-13 a year ago and 10-8 in the American Athletic Conference.
The LSU Tigers will be putting a nine-game winning streak in the building on the line dating back to the final seven home games of last year. This is the third of four straight home games to open the 2018-19 season with LSU hosting Louisiana Tech on Friday night at 7 p.m.
Coach Will Wade met with the media on Monday afternoon and here are some of his comment:
Opening statement….
“… Good win over Greensboro. Obviously we would have like to be a little tighter with things down the stretch, but at the end of the day we were just trying to get a win. We were able to grab a win so that was good. Another step with Memphis here. They’re a very good team. They press. They play extremely hard. They play three point guards together. A couple of freshmen, (Tyler) Harris and (Alex) Lomax, highly recruited guys. Really, really tough kids. Jeremiah Martin, their best player from last year, leads the team in scoring. He’s a very good player. (Kyvon) Davenport, their four man is good. If we can’t guard a pick-and-pop four man better than we did Friday night, he’ll get loose along with a couple of the other bigs. We need to do a better job there. Looking forward to the game tomorrow night.
“I thought last Tuesday our crowd was phenomenal. Hopefully the students will come back out. We had 15-16 hundred students last Tuesday. That made a huge difference. Hopefully everyone over at Nicholson-Gateway and the students will come out. Hopefully our season ticket holders, if you have the tickets, will use them and if not, will buy some because it’s going to be a great game against a very good opponent. When our arena is full, it really helps our team and our team feeds off the crowd. Looking forward to a great game (Tuesday) night and hopefully a great crowd.”
On having a game featuring six point guards…
“We’ll find out tomorrow. They kind of go by the same theory we do. Get your best guards out there. (Jeremiah) Martin is a little bit bigger, kind of like Ja’vonte Smart. (Tyler) Harris is a little smaller kind of like Tremont. You’ve got (Alex) Lomax in the middle like Skylar. They’ve got a good group. I saw Lomax play a ton in AAU. I saw Tyler Harris play a ton in AAU. Harris was on the Under Armor circuit and Lomax was on the Nike circuit. He played for Penny everywhere. I saw those kids play. They’re tough. They compete. They’re your typical Memphis guards.”
On the play of freshman forward Naz Reid and having the green light to shoot 3s …
“He will have the green light early and then if they’re not going in we’re going to go in the post. He has a little of a non-conventional post game. We like to put him on the wing and let him back the defender down from the wing as opposed to just throw it to him on the block. It’s a little bit of a different type of post-game. It’s more of a pro type post-game. Kawhi Leonard and all the guys in the NBA do it. It’s a different way of posting up, but he understands if the first couple of threes don’t go in, we’re going to the post and going to the paint. With him on the perimeter, it opens up a lot of stuff for us. It spreads the court. Gives our guards some driving angles. Pulls one of their bigs away from the basket. He’s able to get in and offensive rebound from there. There’s just a lot of things he can do. It gives us a fourth play maker on the perimeter. There are a lot of advantages to having him there. When we need to, we get him in the post and he’s very, very difficult to guard in the post. He was 11-of-14 from the field the other night. Seven of his 11 makes were from two (point range). Most of his twos were in the paint or close to the rim. It’s not like he’s out there just firing them up from three.”
On the crowd giving the team energy…
“It’s huge. Tomorrow night’s a big game against a really storied program. Traditional power in Memphis. I think everything we can do to have great crowds is good. Our kids deserve it. Our kids have worked hard. These guys could have gone a lot of places and we want to reward the, for coming to LSU. We have a good team. We have great kids who handle their business the right way. It’s important to us that we have great attendance. The students are really key. Our kids are student-athletes. They’re playing for the student body. All the fans that bought season tickets, we want you to come and be a part of it. Enjoy it. You only have so many home games. If you can make it, we’d love to have you tomorrow night.”
On the Memphis team…
“The first thing is, they play extremely hard. Second thing is, they press all over the place. They run a trap. They’re very, very aggressive with their defense. They use their defense to create offense. Offensively, they push the ball hard. The biggest issue with the threes on Friday night was our transition defense. Our transition defense was; we’ve had better days. We need to get that corrected and quickly. They play extremely fast so if we don’t value the ball, that’s going to be a problem. We run god offense, that helps your transition defense, but If we can’t get back any better on transition defense and cover the shooters then that will be a problem. The tempo is much faster than it was last year. It will be a challenge. We’ll need to settle in and not let them get going in transition. They have great scoring ability. They’re able to go on 10-0 runs. They went on a quick 9-0 run in under a minute against Tennessee Tech the other day. It was pretty impressive. We have to do a good job.”
On potentially slowing down the pace against Memphis…
“We do what we do and they do what they do. We play pretty fast too, but we’re not quite as fast as them. We certainly, in the half court need to settle in and move the ball side to side and not take the first quick shot that we see. We need to take great first shots. We don’t need to change who we are. We are who we are and they are who they are. We just need to have a clash of wills here and see who can come out on top. We’ll maybe be a little more discrete in the half court and try to have a little more discretion of what we’re doing. You hold the ball for too long against them, they will trap you. You may not get as good of a shot as you get early on, so you got to be smart. We’ve got to do a good job on handling the pressure.”
On big guys having success shooting the ball in the college game…
“That’s where the game is trending. That’s how it is in the NBA. The big guys are stepping out and making shots. They’re able to make plays. That’s how it is at that level and I think that it’s trickled down to college and trickled down to lower levels. That’s how it works. It moves down. I’m just glad that we have one of them (Naz Reid) that can do it.”
On how Tremont Water’s game has grown…
“Friday night, he looked a lot like last year. He played 35-36 minutes. He had 10 assists, one off his assist record of 11. That was pretty similar to last year. He just has better toys to get the ball to now. I thought he played well. It’s an adjustment for him too. He’s figuring it out. We’ve had a lot of discussions about that and I’m proud of how he’s adjusting. I think we’ll continue to improve with him. The more we play together and the more we get together, I think the more we’ll improve.”