Anyone who has watched the Tiger Band play has probably noticed the abnormally tall tuba player.
That massive musician is now a member of the LSU basketball team.
Andrew Del Piero walked on to the basketball team last week after LSU coach Trent Johnson held open tryouts.
“Everyone always told me I should play,” Del Piero said. “I just figured I had the size, and I’d never know unless I tried. So I just went for it.”
The 7-foot-2-inch, 286-pounder doesn’t have as much basketball experience. In fact, Del Piero hasn’t played organized basketball since his freshman year in high school.
“I played when I was younger when I was growing up,” Del Piero said. “I played through middle school and my freshman year of high school. I kept with it after that but was never too serious about it. Not a school team player but just kind of for fun.”
Johnson said the coaching staff was looking at Del Piero for nearly a year before tryouts.
“Andrew is a young man that hasn’t played a lot, but we knew of him last year,” Johnson said. “Anytime you see a guy in the band walking along with that size, you’re like ‘Oh my goodness.'”
Del Piero, an Austin, Texas, native, began his extracurricular  career at LSU by joining Tiger Band two years ago.
The redshirt sophomore music major was a Class 5A selection for the all-state band for two years while in high school at Westlake High School. He said he began playing tuba in seventh grade and hasn’t stopped since.
While music has been Del Piero’s forte the past few years, basketball runs deep in the Del Piero blood. His father, Paul Del Piero, played college basketball at Dartmouth College.
Andrew Del Piero said after he decided to try out for the team, he spent the summer working with coaches to develop his game. He got the opportunity to work with former University of Texas assistant coach  Eddie Oran.
“Through him I had a connection with the coaching staff here, and I actually talked with them and worked with them before the tryouts even happened,” Andrew Del Piero said. “So I guess going into the tryouts I was pretty confident I had a spot.”
Johnson said it is too early in the year to truly evaluate where the newcomer might fit in. His biggest concern is making sure Del Piero has a good time.
“His biggest contribution that he can give us is once he gets to practice, he can assimilate some size against some of the people we’re going to be playing,” Johnson said. “But our expectations for him are just to enjoy it, get through this year, work hard and have fun.”
While Del Piero was thrilled to make the team, he said the biggest thing he needs to work on is conditioning, and he hopes to prove his worth on the court.
“I need to be able to run up and down the floor and be able to keep up with the smaller guys,” he said. “It’s hard to tell right now whether they actually have a use for me. But I guess I’ll have to wait until I have the time to prove myself.”
Del Piero is the first seven-footer to play at LSU since Geert Hammink in 1992.
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Contact Mark Clements at [email protected]