The LSU soccer team’s next and final home game of the 2003 season was scheduled to be against defending Division II national champions, Christian Brothers, on Nov. 2, but a conflict forced the Tigers to pick up Southern University as the opponent instead.
“I think the game against Southern is going to be a game for history,” Fotopoulos said. “They have a brand new program and they are our cross-town rivals. It’s a great game to replace it with. If we’re going to replace it with anybody, I love to have a school that is in Baton Rouge. We’re excited.”
The 2 p.m. game will mark the first time the two schools have faced each other on the soccer field. LSU begins a four-game road trip Friday at Alabama.
Scheduling conflicts frequently frustrate NCAA coaches. LSU soccer coach George Fotopoulos is the most recent LSU coach being forced into the position to deal with an unwanted scheduling change and he said it is often hard to get schools to agree to travel to Louisiana for a game.
“The difficult thing is that a lot of teams in the country don’t want to come to Baton Rouge and play,” Fotopoulos said. “We’ve tried to bring everybody here. It’s hard because it hurts scheduling.”
Fotopoulos said he hopes that scheduling will become easier as other soccer teams in the state improve. Teams often design their schedules in a way that allows them to face two teams from the same state in one weekend.
“It’s not that they don’t want to play us,” he said. “They just want to have two good teams to play in the state.”