Louisiana Men's Basketball Begins Two-Game Road Trip at Indiana

LAFAYETTE – Louisiana Men's Basketball begins a two-game Midwest road trip on Sunday night when it travels to Bloomington to take on Indiana at Assembly Hall at 6:30 p.m. on the BIG 10 Network. From there, the Ragin' Cajuns will travel to Huntington, W.V. to face future Sun Belt foe Marshall at 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

Louisiana enters the weekend at 3-0 for the first time since the 1995-96 season. The program has not started a year with four consecutive victories since the 1989-90 season.

The Ragin' Cajuns have kept their opponents off-balance this year by running an up-tempo style of offense that has garnered them an average of 73.9 possessions a game. The metric ranks 23rd in the nation and first in the Sun Belt.

Louisiana's frontcourt pairing of Theo Akwuba and Jordan Brown has given the team a dominant paint presence in the early season. The Ragin' Cajuns are tied for 17th in the nation with 6.7 blocks per game. Indiana is also tied for 17th averaging 6.7 blocks of their own.

The Hoosiers are 3-0 on the year with victories over Eastern Michigan, Northern Illinois and St. John's. Indiana defeated the Red Storm by a final score of 76-74 on Wednesday night.

The meeting will be the series opener between the two programs and will mark Louisiana's first game against a BIG 10 opponent since an 80-71 victory over Iowa on Nov. 20, 2017, in the Cayman Islands Classic.

Marshall is 2-1 on the year following a narrow 67-65 loss to Campbell on Thursday. The two programs have met six times previously with the all-time series tied at three wins apiece.

CRASH THE BOARDS
Louisiana is tied for 29th in the nation and ranks first in the Sun Belt with a 45.3 rebounds-per-game average.

Individually, the pairing of Akwuba (8.0) and Brown (7.3) are ranked third and fifth, respectively, in the Sun Belt in rebounds per game.

CAJUN CONNECTION
First-year Indiana head coach Mike Woodson was an assistant coach on the 2020-21 New York Knicks team that featured Ragin' Cajun Hall of Famer Elfrid Payton.

PLAYER TO WATCH: THEO AKWUBA
Through three games, Akwuba is third in scoring on the Louisiana roster with 10.3 points per game. The Montgomery native is shooting .522 percent from the floor and is contributing 0.7 blocks per game in addition to 8.0 rebounds.

LOUISIANA LEGACY
Louisiana's 2021-22 roster features two second-generation talents in Julien and Brown. Julien's father Wayne was with the program from 1976-81 and was a member of the 1977 Southland Conference championship team.

Dion Brown lettered for the Ragin' Cajuns from 1980-84 and finished his career as one of the top scorers and rebounders in school history. Brown, a 1984 graduate of UL, earned All-Southland Conference honors in 1982 and was a two-time All-Louisiana selection.

He finished his career with 1,412 points and 926 rebounds (then second in school history) and helped then-USL to the championship of the 1982 Great Alaskan Shootout where he was named to the All-Tournament team.

Louisiana Men's Basketball Begins Two-Game Road Trip at Indiana

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Players Mentioned

Theo Akwuba

Jordan Brown

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