UL seeks tourney title win over LSU

BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns can cap off an outstanding opening weekend of basketball if they knock off host LSU in today’s finals of the Louisiana Classic at the Maravich Assembly Center.

Coach Robert Lee’s squad thrashed old rival Louisiana Tech 84-63 in last Friday’s opening contest of the tournament to earn a spot in the 3 p.m. finals, while the Tigers drubbed the Tulane Green Wave 83-58.

It will be the first meeting between the two schools since LSU took an 83-65 victory here in 2001.

Friday’s opening win was a major boost for Lee, taking over the program after years as an assistant to first Marty Fletcher and then Jessie Evans, and the Cajuns earned it with an aggressive all-court defense that stifled the Bulldogs.

“In our lineup, we only have two big, big guys,” said junior Tiras Wade, who led five Cajuns in double figures with 20 points. “But we have strength all-around. We can all play every position, so we can play good help defense.

“When we get stuck on the blocks, we just have to man-up.”

Tech post man Paul Millsap had 25 points and 14 rebounds, and Wayne Powell added 9 points, but the other Bulldogs were largely overwhelmed by the Cajuns’ balanced strength.

“We were the same way last year size-wise,” said senior point guard Orien Greene, who had 18 points, hit 3-of-5 3-pointers, had 8 assists and suffered just one turnover. “We can switch everything. We wanted to pressure them on the wings so they couldn’t run their sets, and we wanted to get out in the passing lanes.”

“We wanted to take their guards out of the game,” Lee said. “We had a difficult time controlling Millsap, so we focused on stopping their guards. Our guards go 6-4, 6-6, so we can do a lot of switching. That caused them problems.”

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Bruce Brown
bbrown@theadvertiser.com