Tigers to face SLU

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jan 3, 2009 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Kevyn Green’s college basketball career started when Trent Johnson began recruiting him.

And it will end — well, not quite end, but almost — by playing against an LSU team coached by Johnson tonight.

Green and the Southeastern Louisiana Lions will visit LSU tonight with the story of one of the nation’s top scorers providing an interesting and strange backdrop for what would otherwise be an ordinary non-conference game.

The Portland, Ore., native averages 19.9 points per game to lead the Lions (6-6), who have put scares into the likes of Arkansas (losing in overtime), Auburn and Minnesota this season. But his career will end after two more games — tonight and a Jan. 10 game at Lamar — when the spring semester starts at SLU.

Green entered the school year with just one semester left of eligibility. He’s been in and out of college for 5‰  years, but the first two years, at Nevada where he was recruited by Johnson, included two semesters taken off to take care of his sick mother.

The NCAA ruled that he could play in the fall semester this season, but not the spring. SLU opted to let him play and appeal for another year.

“And when that didn’t work out, we decided to let him play and further his basketball career and help us develop some of our younger players before we need them to be ready (for Southland Conference play),” SLU coach Jim Yarbrough said.

Yarbrough said he figured Green deserved as much.

“He did everything the right way,” Yarbrough said of Green, who has already graduated and was on last year’s Southland Conference all-academic team and the league’s all-conference second team.

With Johnson, who leads the SLC in scoring, the Lions would likely be a favorite, perhaps the clear favorite, in the SLC’s Eastern Division. And that’s not a point lost on Johnson.

“They’re as good as any team we’ve played,” he said. “This is a team that lost in overtime at Arkansas and they played Texas Tech tough at a time when Texas Tech played very well. I am very impressed by them.”

With Green, who has 41 3-pointers on the season, the Lions have a potent inside-out attack. Inside threats Patrick Sullivan (11.7 ppg), a 6-9 junior who has 30 blocked shots, and 6-6 Warrell Span (11.4 ppg), are a one-two punch for an SLU team that outrebounds opponents by six a game.

And that’s been a problem lately for LSU, which has been outrebounded in three of its last four games.