LSU men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson said he has had a chance to interact with students in his short time at the University, including attending the Tigers’ two football games.”The element of passion here, the commitment is absolutely the best I’ve ever been around,” Johnson said about his experience at Saturday’s North Texas game.Now Johnson has seen the students’ commitment to basketball.Roughly 22 students attended open walk-on tryouts Wednesday in the PMAC’s auxiliary gym.Johnson also held open tryouts while at Stanford and Nevada and said this is the largest turnout he’s seen at walk-on tryouts, and he liked the “talent pool” he saw.”It’s similar to what I had at Nevada,” Johnson said. “Going back to Stanford, you had four engineers and a doctor out there, and neither one of them could play.”Assistant coach Keith Richard led tryouts, giving players instructions in one-on-one and team drills.The team has 13 players on scholarship, but Johnson said he is looking for one to two players to walk-on the team.Chris Edwards, biological sciences junior, participated in the tryouts and said he doesn’t expect to hear the results for two weeks.”They might pick a couple players, and they might pick four and have them try out with the team and just pick from there,” Edwards said.The team begins practice Oct. 17 and opens the season against Jackson State on Nov. 15 in the PMAC.—-Contact Robert Stewart at [email protected]