BATON ROUGE – From a member of the Golden Band From Tigerland to the basketball court at LSU as a walkon; from the senior starting scholarship center on the LSU Tigers to a college graduate. In a nutshell, that sums up a good part of Andrew Del Piero’s years at LSU.
That special culminating moment for Del Piero, a 7-3 senior from Austin, Texas, came on Friday when he received his LSU degree in sociology.
Del Piero, who played tuba for the Golden Band for two-years after a stellar high school band career, was invited to walk-on prior to the 2011 basketball season. He redshirted that season while refining his skills and played sparingly off the bench during the 2012 season.
After making significant progress in the summer and fall conditioning program after Coach Johnny Jones arrived at LSU, he was given a scholarship for his final season. He responded by becoming one of the most improved players in the Southeastern Conference, starting 22 games and averaging 4.3 points and 3.1 rebounds a game.