Tiger Basketball Hosts Northwestern State Friday; Free Admission With LSU FB Ticket
BATON ROUGE – The LSU basketball team, coming off a split in the Greenbrier Tipoff last weekend, including a dramatic triple overtime win, returns to the friendly home court of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center Friday to take on Northwestern State University.
The game will tip just after 7 p.m. and tickets are available at LSUTix.net and beginning at 6 p.m. at the Maravich Center. Those with a ticket for the OU-LSU football game Saturday night can present proof of the ticket at the upper ticket box office and receive free admission for the game. LSU students are admitted free of charge with valid ID.
The game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network with the Voice of the Tigers, Chris Blair, and former LSU head coach John Brady. The game in Baton Rouge will air on Guaranty Media flagship station Eagle 98.1 FM. The game will be streamed on SECN+ with Lyn Rollins and Victor Howell.
The Tigers (5-1) are coming off the 109-102 triple overtime win over UCF in which LSU rallied from 20 down late in the first half to force overtime. Jalen Reed, who made the Greenbrier All-Tournament team, had 21 points and 13 rebounds (his second career double double), while Jordan Sears had 25 points, Cam Carter 20, Vyctorius Miller 16 and Dji Bailey 14 points, six rebounds.
“I was just so impressed with our players, resiliency and toughness to keep playing the game even when trailing by 20. To find a way to get back, get the game to overtime, and then lots of ebbs and flows in the three overtimes,” said LSU Coach Matt McMahon. “We score 84 points after halftime. I’ve never seen that before in the first half. I thought we struggled to finish plays at the rim. We also made some poor decisions at the rim.
“Credit to our players. I thought it seemed insignificant at the time, but to finish the first half on a 7-2 run was important, and then we were able to look at some things on film at halftime with our players and they did a great job of making the adjustment. And the final piece of that would be a lot of credit to our new strength and conditioning coach, Mike Chatman. Jalen Reed plays 48 minutes, Cam Carter 52, Dji and Jordan over 40. As crazy as it sounds, we played our best offense in the overtime period. So really a testament of the work he’s done with our guys in the strength and conditioning program.”
Northwestern State is coming in with a 2-4 record after a 71-58 win over North Alabama on Nov. 24. The Demons have had two two-point losses in the last four games, dropping an overtime 77-75 decision at Rice and a 65-63 loss to ULM.
Jon Sanders leads the Demons averaging 13.8 points a game, while Addison Patterson averages 12.0 points and 3.7 assists per game. The Demons shoot 45.6 percent from the field and 35.4 percent from the distance after shooting over 60 percent in the second half in each of the last two games.
“I think Coach (Rick) Cabrera has done a great job starting to build his program there. They are coming off a big win over North Alabama. They played Oklahoma really close. They led for about 30 minutes of that game on the road,” said Coach McMahon.
The game starts a three-game homestand for LSU leading into semester final exam week as LSU will host Florida State on Tuesday (8 p.m.) in the annual SEC/Big 12 Challenge and then Florida Gulf Coast on Sunday (Dec. 8) at 2 p.m.
The athletic department’s Black Friday sale continues through the weekend as fans can buy a ticket for either the Florida State, Stetson (Dec. 17) or UNO (Dec. 22) game and receive a free ticket for the Jan. 4 Vanderbilt SEC opener.