Coming off two less than impressive exhibition performances, the LSU men’s basketball team looks to improve when the Tigers host Southern University in the regular season opener tonight in the PMAC at 7 p.m.
LSU coach John Brady said he looks for the veterans on the team – junior guards Antonio Hudson and Xavier Whipple and sophomore guard Darrel Mitchell – to step up and play more consistently than they have in exhibition play.
“I expect a lot from them in terms of getting the players where they need to be during the course of the game,” Brady said. “I expect them to play better, but more importantly, I expect them to play more consistently than they’ve played. If I can get that out of Xavier and Antonio and Darrel Mitchell, it’ll certainly help us early on.”
Hudson said the team cannot expect to make vast improvements overnight. He said the team has made strides toward those improvements in the two practices since Monday night’s exhibition.
“We need to take it step by step,” Hudson said after Thursday’s practice. “We can’t expect ourselves to make huge steps. We’ve just got to take it day by day, game by game. Since the exhibition, I feel like we’ve worked a little bit harder.”
Hudson said it excites him to play a game that counts and playing Southern in the opener adds to the game.
“We’re playing Southern – that’s a local team, a local school so it’s kind of like a rival,” Hudson said. “I just can’t wait. I’m pumped up.”
The Tigers have met their crosstown rivals six previous times with LSU winning every game. The last meeting came in 2001 when LSU defeated Southern 97-69.
Southern coach Michael Grant, who was hired five months ago, said the Jaguars are not the same team Tigers fans saw two years ago.
“It’s a new attitude,” Grant said Thursday in a telephone interview. “We’re not the same program that people have seen in the past. I’m bringing a lot of discipline and instruction to the team.”
The Jaguars would like to run up and down the court, but Grant said he wants Southern to be known for its defensive play. He said keeping LSU from scoring will be the key to giving the Jaguars a chance to win the game tonight.
“We’re going to play some defense,” Grant said. “We have to keep the score down and try to control the tempo.”
Grant said he wants the Jaguars’ opponents to look at Southern as a tough team to play. He looks at tonight’s game as the first stepping stone to that accomplishment, nothing more, nothing less.
“We think that every game is a big game,” Grant said. “This is an opportunity for both schools to get together and to see where they are as a team. It’s good for the community and a good opportunity to build our program.”
Grant said he will discover which players on his team are the playmakers and what the identity of the team is. With the Tigers having five freshmen on the team, Brady said LSU does not have a true identity yet either.
“We don’t know who we are yet either,” Brady said. “We don’t have the identity that we’ve had in the past because we’re so inexperienced. And our best player [forward Jaime Lloreda] is not going to play.”
With Lloreda suspended for the game, Brady will count on freshmen forwards Darnell Lazare and Brandon Bass to carry the load under the basket.
“We have no time to wait and no time to rest,” Brady said. “I told Brandon and Darnell, I’m probably placing more demands on them now than I normally would, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. They don’t have time to sit around and make a mistake or two. The game is on now and it’s time to play.”