SPOKANE, Washington – The LSU men’s basketball team arrived here late Thursday afternoon in preparation for its toughest test of the young season when they face No. 14 Gonzaga Saturday afternoon in the Bad Boy Mowers Series at the Numerica Veterans Arena.
While not the Bulldogs home arena, the building is expected to be full of Gonzaga faithful in the 12,000-seat venue as Gonzaga looks for its eighth straight win in a game at the Arena.
Tipoff is set for 12:30 p.m. PT (2:30 p.m. Baton Rouge time) and will be available on the LSU Sports Radio Network (Baton Rouge Guaranty Media station for this game is 100.7 FM The Tiger) with Greg Talbott sitting in for Chris Blair, joined by Jordy Hultberg. The game will be televised on USA Network, the Tigers first appearance on this network since the late 1980s.
This will be the first-ever meeting between the two programs. Gonzaga and Mark Few did take on current LSU head coach Will Wade in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, when the Zags took down Wade's McNeese State Cowboys, 86-65, in the first round.
Coach Few has 20 wins against Southeastern Conference opponents, with the Bulldogs winning seven of their last nine matchups against the SEC. Last season, The Zags won over SEC member Oklahoma in the Bad Boy Mowers Series.
LSU is 7-3 all-time against the present members of the newly reconfigured Pac 12.
The Numerica Veterans Arena isn’t completely foreign to the Tiger athletic program as the LSU women’s basketball team played in the regional round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament in the building. The women’s team defeated NC State in the Sweet 16 and lost to UCLA in the Elite 8 game.
Gonzaga is 2-0 on the season after a 78-72 win over Purdue in Las Vegas and a 109-68 victory over New Mexico State last Saturday.
The Bulldogs had 36 points off 19 New Mexico turnovers and after leading by five at the half outscored New Mexico State, 62-26, in the final 20 minutes.
LSU has its solid core of eight players that has blended together nicely in the first three wins against LSU New Orleans, Texas Southern and Louisiana Tech. The eight players have combined to play no less than 52 minutes over the course of the three games and the eight have played 576 of the 600 minutes for the five players to open the season.
Backup center Michael Ruzic leads the Tigers at 15.7 points per game. He is also averaging 7.3 rebounds. Abdi Bashir, who also comes off the bench, averaged 14.0 points. Donovan Dent is at 13.7 points per game (25 assists in three games) and Mo Dioubate is at 12.7 points. Saliou Niang is averaging a double double early with 11.7 points and 10.3 rebounds with Brice Dessert rounding out the double-digit totals with 10.0 points a contest.
LSU will be looking to make inroads against The Zags in the paint after scoring 60, 62 and 40 in the three games. LSU is top five in the country in points in the paint.
LSU avoided the national flight issues on Friday, flying in to Spokane on Thursday late afternoon and practiced for close to two hours Friday at Spokane Community College, including the scouting walkthrough on Gonzaga. Both teams will be in the arena for the first time on Saturday as there was a Spokane hockey game in the arena Friday night.
LSU will return home for two games next week, facing ULM on Nov. 18 and Queen’s on Nov. 21. Both games have 7 p.m. tips in the Maravich Center.