BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s basketball team went through a just over two-hour practice on the floor of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center Wednesday afternoon to signal the official beginning of preseason practice for the 2025-26 campaign.

The Tigers, under fourth-year head coach Matt McMahon, worked on transition offense and defense, rebounding block out drills and worked on 5-on-5 offensive and defensive drills during the session. All 14 players took part in the practice and Coach McMahon said in his preseason media session that all players would be available for the start of practice with the exception of redshirt junior Jalen Reed, who has not been cleared yet for 5-on-5 contact work.

Reed, who is rehabbing from his ACL injury and subsequent surgery last December, continues to take part in the majority of drills during practice.

Prior to the practice, Coach McMahon discussed starting another season of college basketball:

“I absolutely love our team,” he said. “We’ve had a phenomenal summer and fall. We are really excited about the roster. It’s essentially a brand-new team, which I think is great. It allows us to shape this team into whatever we can be. What’s been fun to see is we intentionally got older as we put the roster together.

“We went from an average age around 19 and a half to an average age of 22 in our program, and I think that shows the experience and maturity of our team, how connected our group is here on a short turnaround. So to be 12 weeks together, I think we really compete at a high, high level and that’s why I’m excited to get practice started here.”

Coach McMahon talked about the work Reed has gone through to get close to being ready to play again.

“As we all know, he suffered the devastating knee injury last December in the win over Florida State. He has really been an inspiration through this process. I would say he’s ahead of schedule at this point, coming off the ACL injury, not cleared for five-on-five contact yet, but really progressing well, and I’m excited about the special things he’s going to do. We scheduled intentionally our November, as we hope to have him back for those five games in 16 days here at home kick off the season.”

The Tigers will play one exhibition game on the road on Sunday, Oct. 26, at noon in Orlando against UCF before opening the season on Nov. 5 against Tarleton State.

Season tickets are on sale at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office. Lower level tickets in the 200 sections are available for purchase.

LSU’s practice on Wednesday was the first of 30 practices the Tigers are allowed in the 42-day period prior to the first official regular season game.