So doing my every-once-in-a-while search for who is going to be on LSU's basketball schedule this year, I found this juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy tidbit:
Memphis is scheduled to face LSU on November 21st in the BrancorpSouth Center in Tupelo, Mississippi. Why the hell we're playing in Tupelo is beyond me but holy hell, a big non-conference opponent. Maybe not a Duke, a Syracuse or a Michigan State, but a very big name nonetheless.
Memphis, for those of you who didn't catch it, is where John Calipari coached and had massive success at before leaving for Kentucky. The current coach is the young Josh Pastner (32 years old), and his Memphis squad is equipped with arguably the best recruiting class in the nation (2nd on Rivals rankings, but they love Kentucky).
The class, seven strong with three five-star players (SG Will Barton, PG Joe Jackson and SF Jelan Kendrick) and some guy from Cameroon named Hippolyte Tsafack (pron. HIP-po-LEET CHA-fack according to his player bio) will undoubtedly be a huge part of this team's success. This will be a team that might go under the radar, but it's a potential sweet-sixteen candidate, and, of course, a huge favorite to win the C-USA.
Winning the C-USA alone won't be enough to get Memphis a huge spot, however, so Memphis will need to play big-name teams like us in their OOC schedule to boost their RPI (they also have Miami, Kansas, Georgetown, Tennessee and Gonzaga on their schedule.) Therefore, these games are of utmost importance for a big-fish small conference team like Memphis, so expect them to play LSU hard.
But I think our young team has a chance against their young team. We might not win, but if we can hang with them tough, I think our Tigers will find the SEC schedule easily navigable. And who knows? Our Tigers could turn out to be the top tigers in Tupelo.
But it's games like this that have me excited about the upcoming season. I'm gonna search to see if there's any other tidbits that haven't been directed to me.