LSU meets ULL in Louisiana Classic final

BATON ROUGE -- The "Louisiana" title will be on the line this afternoon.

Louisiana (State) plays the University of Louisiana (at Lafayette) at 3 p.m. in the championship game of the "LSU Louisiana Classic" at the Maravich Center.

The two schools' men's basketball teams have played 42 times since 1914 with LSU leading 32-10 but not with a title on the line in modern history.

LSU beat Tulane 83-58 and ULL beat Louisiana Tech 84-63 on Friday in the opening round of the tournament. The Tigers last played the Cajuns on Dec. 4, 2001, and won 83-65 at home in the first series meeting since 1945.

LSU coach John Brady is taking the game and the title very seriously. After an 11 a.m. practice Saturday, he moved his team out of Baton Rouge to the seclusion of the Holiday Inn in nearby Gonzales to get away from the hoopla of a football Saturday. LSU's football team, which used to stay at that same hotel, played Ole Miss on Saturday night.

In a vaguely similar move, former Georgetown coach John Thompson moved his team to Biloxi, Miss., to get away from the City that Care Forgot when New Orleans hosted the Final Four in 1982. LSU football coach Nick Saban considered such a move the week of the national championship game in New Orleans last season.

"I know the attraction of the Saturday-night football game," Brady said. "We're not going to let that be an issue. We're going to watch tape and talk about our opponent. We'll have a snack for our team at 10 p.m. Then we'll go to sleep. We're going to have our guys all together and have them concentrating on this game. We want our football team to win, but we have other things we have to take care of."

ULL hit 10-of-24 from 3-point range Friday.

"They're a real athletic team," said LSU guard Darrel Mitchell of St. Martinville who hit 2-of-4 from 3-point range Friday. "They shoot a lot of threes. They don't have a real dominating big man, but they have some people who can play down there. They're coming in here with nothing to lose and want to beat us."

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By Glenn Guilbeau
gguilbeau@gannett.com