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Your LSU Basketball Tigers (1-0) take on the Southern Miss Golden Eagles (1-0) tonight at 7pm in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Southern Miss is from Conference-USA, where they finished 8-21 (5-13) in their 2015-16 campaign, tying for 12th place out of 14 teams. Despite their record, Southern Miss self-imposed a postseason ban due to an ongoing investigation regarding violations committed by former head coach (and former LSU assistant coach) Donnie Tyndall. You might recognize Tyndall as Tennessee’s head coach for 2014-15, who was fired immediately after the season once the NCAA revealed the aforementioned investigation to Tennessee officials. Tyndall was hit with a 10 year show-cause penalty, and is currently an assistant coach for the D-League’s Raptors 905.
Current Southern Miss head coach (and former Nebraska head coach) Doc Sadler is now in his third season with the Golden Eagles with an overall record of 18-41 (9-27). Southern Miss lost Redshirt Senior Kourtlin Jackson, who led last year’s Golden Eagles with 14.5 points per game. The Eagles only added two players to this year’s team who are eligible to play this season, JUCO transfer Marcus Cooper and 3-star freshman Josh Conley. Neither player appeared in the season opener.
Southern Miss’ season opener was a double overtime struggle against NAIA Tougaloo, a 101-96 victory. They shot the lights out with a 56.7 FG% and made 7-of-14 3 pointers, but committed 28 turnovers as a team.
Tonight’s contest is LSU’s second of three games before they travel to The Bahamas for The Battle 4 Atlantis next week. Catch tonight’s game online through SEC Network+. Follow along and join the discussion in the comments below, or follow my live tweets via @marq113.