Arena #168: Pete Maravich Assembly Center - Louisiana St. vs. Georgia

For my final trip of the regular season (and what would ultimately turn out to be my final trip overall after Coronavirus stopped the world), it was off to the state of Louisiana for a weekend tripleheader starting at Louisiana St. University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.  These would be my first games ever in the state of Louisiana; bringing my total number of states where I’ve seen a game to 40 and the District of Columbia.  On this afternoon, the LSU Tigers were hosting the Georgia Bulldogs in the final SEC game of the regular season at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, Arena #168.

Walking up to the Maravich Center, you walk right past Tiger Stadium (aka Death Valley), which just towers over the basketball arena.  Additionally, you walk past one of the most unique features of LSU sports in general, the habitat of Mike the Tiger.  There’s certainly not many places in the country where you have a live animal mascot housed right outside the school’s sports facilities as is the case in Baton Rouge.  For obvious reasons, Mike does not make an appearance in the arena for basketball games, but is brought out onto the field for football games.  From the outside (and the inside), the Maravich Center is almost a carbon copy of the State Farm Center in Champaign, IL, which is the home of the University of Illinois basketball program.  The concourses aren’t very wide, but the huge windows throughout the concourse make it appear much more spacious than it really is.  The seating bowl itself is well designed and the layout is nearly perfect to where I’d argue there probably isn’t a bad seat in the building with even the 300 section of the arena seeming like it’s decently close to the action.  On this day, I was fortunate enough to get a reasonably priced center court ticket that gave me access to the Legends Club, which was a private room off the concourse that offered plush seating, specialty drinks, and free popcorn pregame and at halftime.  It wasn’t overly fancy, but was a decent place to hang out and stretch instead of being in a cramped arena seat.

LSU was having a relatively strong season again on the basketball court, and were even ranked in the top 20 at one point before going on a bit of a losing streak, and Georgia was struggling even though they had one of the top NBA draft prospects in the country in guard Anthony Edwards.  As such, I didn’t expect this game to be overly competitive, but I hoped that Georgia could keep it somewhat close at least.  As it turned out, my initial assumptions were correct that LSU was by far the superior team in this contest, especially playing at home and especially being on Senior Day with the Tigers having 3 senior players and honoring a 4^th young man, Wayde Sims, who would have been a senior before his untimely passing prior to his junior season.  LSU dominated the game throughout in a 94-64 win that would turn out to be the Tigers final win (and final game) of the season to finish with a record of 21-10 (12-6 SEC).  LSU would have expected to hear its name called on Selection Sunday if the world hadn’t turned upside down soon after this game was played.

Mike the Tiger in his habitat just outside the Maravich Center

Outside view of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center

Even halfway up the upper level of the seating bowl the view isn't too bad

Opening tip between the Tigers and Bulldogs

LSU going for the slam early in the game