Basketball Hosts Florida St. in SEC/ACC Challenge, Tuesday; Free T-Shirts For LSU Students

BATON ROUGE – The LSU Tigers looks to help itself and the Southeastern Conference Tuesday night when it hosts Florida State in the second SEC/ACC Challenge at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

The Tigers and Seminoles are schedule for a just after 8 p.m. CT tip with tickets on sale at LSUTix.net and starting one hour prior to the game at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center. It is another Beat The Buzzer Tuesday at LSU men’s basketball games with selected food, drinks and beer at 50-percent off from gates open at 7 p.m. until 10 minutes to tipoff.

LSU students are admitted free of charge and the first 500 students at the game will receive one of the new LSU “The Big Time” T-Shirts for the contest.

The Voice of the Tigers Chris Blair and former LSU men’s basketball coach John Brady will call the game at LSUsports.net/live and on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network including Baton Rouge Guaranty Media flagship Eagle 98.1 FM. Roy Philpott and Dane Bradshaw will have the television call on the SEC Network.

The game is 1 of 10 scheduled between the two leagues with six more games on Wednesday. Last year in a 14-game challenge, the leagues split 7-7. LSU lost at Syracuse a year ago.

The Tigers are 6-1 and No. 50 in the inaugural NCAA NET rankings which came out for the first time on Monday. Florida State is coming in at 7-1 and on a four-game winning streak. The Seminoles, under veteran coach Leonard Hamilton, has its one loss to Florida in a game in Tallahassee.

“Great opportunity for us (Tuesday) night against a really good Florida State team,” said LSU Coach Matt McMahon. “I always have great respect for Coach Hamilton and his teams. They are elite defensively. When you look at the numbers, fifth in the country in block percentage, fourth in steal percentage, third in forced turnovers, they really guard you and are very disruptive on that end of the floor.

“Offensively, Coach Hamilton has very balanced teams. They are led by (guard Jamir) Watkins, who’s averaging over 17 a game in just 25 minutes, which is hard to do. A lot of respect for their team.”

The Tigers are coming off another game with a slow first half start that found the Tigers trailing at the half for the third straight game before getting the offense going in the second half, including in a 77-53 win over Northwestern State on Friday in which LSU trailed by one after 20 minutes.

“I like the direction we are headed as a group,” Coach McMahon said of the Tigers. “I was very pleased with our second half on Friday night and the win. We’ve had a couple good days of prep going in to this game. We would love to have a great crowd Tuesday. It’s the last week of classes (for the semester), so hope for a huge student turnout (Tuesday) night at eight o’clock on the SEC Network.”

The Tigers are expected to keep the same lineup that it has used in the last two games against UCF and Northwestern State with guards Cam Carter, Jordan Sears and Dji Bailey and forwards Corey Chest and Jalen Reed.

Carter leads the Tigers with a 16,7 points per game average, while Sears is at 14.7 and Reed at 12.4. Vyctorius Miller has come off the bench with double figures the last five games and is averaging 11.1 points a contest.