BATON ROUGE — LSU’s women’s basketball program will host the Katrina Relief Basketball Classic in New Orleans as part of “LSU Operation Rebound” with all the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity and the Friends of New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD).
LSU will face Louisiana Tech in New Orleans Arena on Dec. 30, 2006 as the center point of a weekend of events to benefit “LSU Operation Rebound.”
“LSU Operation Rebound” is the a brainchild of LSU head coach Pokey Chatman, a native of the New Orleans area, and was created to help the Lady Tigers basketball program rebuild Louisiana
“The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina does not have to remain the reality,” Chatman said. “We want to assist in the recovery effort at our highest level and inspire others to do the same. Continuous awareness will result in the necessary actions to get us one step closer to our goal of rebuilding Louisiana.”
In addition to the game, a banquet and auction will be held during the Katrina Relief Basketball Classic weekend.
Along with the funds raised by the game, banquet and auction, the Pokey Chatman Foundation has created the Pokey Chatman Century Club, an organization of 100 people each contributing $1,000 to join.
The Lady Tigers program, along with the LSU Athletics Department, the Tiger Athletic Foundation, LSU Sports Properties and the Fast Break Club, has set a goal to raise at least $150,000 for the two charities.
Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller and has built and rehabilitated more than 200,000 houses, sheltering more than one million people in more than 3,000 communities worldwide.
Friends of NORD was founded in 1994 as a non-profit corporation created to increase community involvement by providing volunteer services and interest in recreational activities and to raise funds for special projects and improvements for the New Orleans Recreation Department.
“These two charities touch at the essence of where New Orleans and Louisiana needs to start rebuilding – families and children,” Chatman added.
The game itself will feature the renewal of the in-state rivalry that began in 1976. The two programs have not met since the 2003 NCAA West Regional Semifinal in Palo Alto, Calif., and have not played in the regular season since a 1991 meeting in Ruston.
The overall series is led by Louisiana Tech with a 12-7 advantage, but LSU has won three of the last four meetings, including each of the past two regular season meetings.
“First and foremost, it’s for a great cause,” Louisiana Tech head coach Chris Long said. “The hurricanes affected so many people in the state of Louisiana. It affected those in southern Louisiana much more drastically than those of us in the northern part of the state, but we had a lot of evacuees so we saw the effect it had on so many people. Anything we can do to help the hurricane victims, we want to do that.”
Tickets information for the game will be available at a later date.
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