Students are expected — if not demanded — to flock to tailgates around campus during the football season.It’s late January, more than a month after the end of the home football schedule. Yet sure enough, last Saturday, there they were. Dozens of LSU tailgates dotting the area surrounding Tiger Stadium, preparing not for football but for the men’s basketball team’s showdown with then-No. 15 Xavier.Unlike LSU’s hot and humid home football games, fans braved 45 degree temperatures and a perpetual rainy mist to prepare for what was undoubtedly the biggest LSU basketball game in more than a year.”This has been in the working since earlier in the week. We’ve been to South Carolina and Mississippi State, and they’ve been playing great,” said Jansen Wagner, marketing senior. “If it rains, we’ll get in the trucks and hang out.”Wagner and his friends aren’t the only ones putting their hoops fever on display. As anyone waiting outside the PMAC on Saturday can attest, the throng of LSU students decked in purple and gold stretched from the front doors to Mike the Tiger’s habitat.The fanaticism may be too much for even the Man of Steel. Cody Salomone, marketing junior and the purple and gold Superman at the forefront of every football student section, found himself well short of the front row on this particular evening.”We’ve been here since 4:45 [in the afternoon], and we didn’t think the line would be this crazy,” Salomone said. “Actually we’re a little disappointed we aren’t a little further ahead in line … In my three years at LSU, I’ve never seen a basketball crowd like this. After the Final Four, we were excited, but never to the point where they had barbecuing, tailgating and stuff before the game.”At the center of it stands Caleb McKenzie and Co., the unofficial orchestrators of this Tiger basketball mania. You might recognize McKenzie, an agriculture business senior, as the jersey-wearing, sign-holding fanatic standing front and center at the PMAC’s student section during every basketball game in recent memory.”I’ve been here for nine years. My brother stuck me in the student section when I was in eighth grade,” McKenzie said. “This is the first time we haven’t been winning before the crowds started showing up … it feels good to have that kind of atmosphere around here.”McKenzie and close friend Jason Lynch, business management senior, got to the PMAC at 2 p.m. Saturday but said the earliest arrivals got in line at 10 a.m. for the 7 p.m. tipoff.”I played basketball. I refereed it. I just came from a basketball family. Pistol Pete [Maravich] is my hero, man,” McKenzie said. “What makes me happy is that all of the students want to get in and participate.”If their passion wasn’t evident enough, consider the fact McKenzie is no longer a student. He graduated in December but is “finishing off” the season.  He often uses his friend’s IDs to gain entrance to games but has made enough friends to ensure himself a seat.”In nine years I have made friends with pretty much every cop, marshal and PMAC administrator,” McKenzie said.  “They all know I don’t intend on doing this forever, and they like the idea that there will always be at least one lunatic trying to make things exciting.”The excitement made an impression on visiting fans. Although their numbers were small, the Xavier fans sitting across from the students came away impressed with the LSU fans’ efforts.”The student support is amazing, we don’t see that in a lot of places,” said Xavier alumnus Scott Kimball. “When LSU is playing well it’s about as loud as it can get. And I love ‘Neck.’ You can quote me on that.”The madness couldn’t quite carry over to the team, as LSU lost, 80-70, to the Musketeers. But for students who just seem happy to have a reason to get excited about basketball, “the support is for the season, not just tonight,” Lynch said.”Just because we have a loss to a top-13 team, I don’t think we’ll abandon it,” McKenzie said. “I would like to see it get back to the glory days of the ‘80s when it really was the ‘Deaf’ Dome before I fade into non-student spectating.”——Contact David Helman at [email protected]