Green Wave Men's Basketball Hit the Road for the 1st Time
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Tonight, the Tulane men's basketball team heads to Lafayette for the first of a pair of games this week against Louisiana teams. The Green Wave will be taking on the Ragin' Cajuns of Louisiana this evening in the Cajundome. The Wave follow that up with a Friday night matchup against the University of New Orleans in Fogelman. That makes it a Bayou State kind of week.
"I think it's important if we want college basketball, basketball period, to be something successful in our state," Tulane coach Ron Hunter told us this week. "We all need to play each other. The kids get fired up. The fan base gets excited about it. Whether it's (the University of) Louisiana or (the University of) New Orleans, we've got to get ready to play."
Tulane has earned two victories in the pair of games they've played so far this season. A week ago, the Green Wave took care of Samford, 85-72. Then, this past Saturday, the Wave overcame a 20-point deficit to overcome Texas State out of the Sun Belt Conference, 79-71. In that game, Tulane set a school record for most free throws made without a miss, going 30-of-30 from the charity stripe. Leading the way in that game, junior guard Rowan Brumbaugh, who scored 33-points from the field and hit all 19 of his free throws. Brumbaugh was named American Conference player of the week for his efforts.
Louisiana-Lafayette, also a Sun Belt Conference school, enters the game with a 1-1 record on the season after falling in their season opener a week ago at Ball State, 75-64 in Muncie, Indiana, then defeating Southeastern Louisiana 58-52 at home on Friday, November 7. The Ragin' Cajuns are averaging 61.0 points on 46.6 percent shooting from the floor and 33.3 percent from beyond the arc through two games this season.
The duo of Jamyron Keller and Jaxon Olvera lead the attack for the Louisiana-Lafayette. Keller averages a team-high 17.0 points per game while Olvera follows with 16.5 points per game.
This marks the 26th all-time meeting between Tulane and Louisiana-Lafayette with the Green Wave leading the series 22-3. The Wave has won the last three matchups in Lafayette to hold a 4-1 advantage over the Ragin' Cajuns on the road.
The Green Wave look to start 3-0 for the fourth consecutive season as it hits the road for the first time to take on Louisiana-Lafayette in the Cajundome Tuesday night. The Green Wave has started each of the past three seasons and five of its six seasons under Head Coach Ron Hunter with a 3-0 record.
The game between the Wave and the Ragin' Cajuns is set to tipoff at 7 p.m. on ESPN+. Fans can also listen to the action live on the Tulane Sports Network from Learfield on 106.7 The Ticket.
Tulane Athletics contributed to this story
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.