Physical Cougars visit LSU

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Dec 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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If the holiday season has proven anything to LSU fans, it’s that there’s diversity in college basketball.

And not necessarily the kind of diversity one might be thinking of.

Sure there is plenty of ethnic and national diversity — since the Dec. 17 game against Nicholls State, the Tigers have faced off against Australians (Nicholls), a Canadian (McNeese State), and a native of the British Virgin Islands (again, from McNeese).

LSU will see more international flavor with Washington State (8-3), led by Australian-born center Aron Baynes, in town today.

But the diversity comes more from how the Tigers’ opponents have played. The recent schedule proves there’s more than one way to win a basketball game.

In fact, there are a number of ways to approach a basketball game and WSU, with its physical style, is proof.

The Cougars, who will oppose LSU on its first ESPN2 appearance of the season, will bring a bruising, defensive-oriented style that is the signature of coach Tony Bennett, a protégé of his father, Dick Bennett.

“On every pass, on every cut, they make you feel their presence,” said LSU coach Trent Johnson of the Cougars’ man-to-man defense, which is allowing a national low of 48 points per game. “And it’s good, clean, hard physical basketball. I’m not so sure that this (LSU) team has been in a situation like this.”

It isn’t the first time this month, however, LSU has been asked to play a different style, one a bit off the beaten path. First, came the Nicholls State Princeton-style offense in a close win. Then the more conventional, but physical and talented, Texas A&M approach that gave LSU its first loss. Then came the zone look that McNeese State gave in the Tigers’ last game, a three-point LSU win.

“I brought closure to our game (against McNeese) real soon because it was a hard-fought contest and we had some guys that are banged up,” said Johnson, who met with the media Tuesday before giving players a couple of days off for the Christmas break. “We had some guys that are spent emotionally after coming off a very hard-fought game with Texas A&M.”

Christmas has given the Tigers a chance to recover, only to run into a team that plays a style that is also likely to drain the 9-1 Tigers physically and emotionally. Johnson, who is 8-4 as a head coach against Washington State — 7-3 at Stanford and 1-1 at Nevada — can attest to that tendency.

“We beat them three times last year and I’ve never been in a situation like that one where you won and you feel like we lost,” Johnson said. “That’s the biggest compliment I can give to a team like Washington State. (UCLA coach) Ben Howland said it best two years ago that when you play a Tony Bennett-coached team that it’s like root canal.”

If it’s a root canal, then the drilling will most likely be done by Baynes, a 250-pound senior center who gets his 11.6 points and 6.1 rebounds a game in a mere 24 minutes a night. Klay Thompson, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard with a great pedigree (his father is former NBA player Mychael Thompson and his mother is a former volleyball letterman in college), is averaging 10.9 points.