BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team opens a most anticipated season of play on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center against another team now in purple and gold, the LSU New Orleans Privateers.
The game will be broadcast on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network (Guaranty Media flagship Eagle 98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) with the “Voice” of the Tigers, Chris Blair and analyst Jordy Hultberg. The contest will be streamed on SECN+ with Lyn Rollins and Victor Howell back on the broadcast of LSU non-conference home games.
There will be several promos for the game highlighted by the famed Red Panda act. Her act involves riding an 8-foot-tall unicycle while catching and balancing multiple metal bowls on her feet and head.
There will be Bob Pettit Lapel Pins for the first 2000 fans and a moment of silence will be held for the legendary player and legendary head basketball coach Dale Brown who both passed away in the last six weeks. There will be 500 General Will Wade T-shirts for students and the game will feature the return of the Beat the Buzzer promotion this time for the entire night with 50 percent off nachos, hot dogs, popcorn and 22-ounce fountain drinks.
Tickets are available at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office and online at LSUTix.net. Tickets will go on sale on game night at 6 p.m. at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center.
The game marks the first regular season game of Coach Will Wade’s second stint as the head coach of the Tigers. He has called the rebuild of the Tigers “unconventional” as he molded a roster of 14 players made up of transfers, international players and a couple of high school products expected to be able to take the floor.
LSU has been led in the three exhibition games by Donovan Dent, a 5th year player who transferred from UCLA who has averaged 19.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game. Senior Mo Dioubate, who has three years of experience in the SEC, is averaging 13.0 points and 7.0 rebounds.
Skyy Clark started in the 89-87 loss at Florida State in LSU’s final exhibition game, hitting seven three-pointers and 21 points. Also starting was Brice Dessert at center (France) and Italian Saliou Niang at forward.
LSU New Orleans won an 82-72 exhibition decision at Southern Miss and is trying to duplicate their strong turnaround season which featured an improvement of 11 wins from the 2024-25 season. The Privateers had nine road wins a year ago.
This will be the 20th time these teams have played, meeting for the third straight season. LSU won last year 93-58. LSU leads the overall series, 15-4, and 11-3 in games played n the Maravich Center. The teams first met in 1977.
Stacy Hollowell, who won a national championship at Loyola (New Orleans) in 2022, is in his third year as the head coach of the Privateers. Former LSU Head Coach and radio analyst John Brady, is now a senior advisor and administrator for the LSU New Orleans basketball program.
This will be the first of three games in seven days for the Tigers with LSU hosting Texas Southern on Friday at 7 p.m. and Louisiana Tech on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. Fans with football tickets for the LSU-Alabama football game on Saturday may use their ticket on Friday night at the ticket windows for free admission to that game.