BATON ROUGE – Taking advantage of a new rule in Division I basketball, the LSU men’s basketball team will go on the road Sunday to take on UCF in an exhibition contest inside Addition Financial Arena in Orlando, Florida.

The game is set to tip off at 11 a.m. CT. There will be no radio broadcast of the contest, but the game will be streamed on ESPN+.

Division I allows two Division I basketball teams to meet in exhibition games this year without a requested waiver from the NCAA with the rare DI vs. DI games in the past being allowed for a charity cause.

LSU has played three of these games in the past in the waiver/charity era with LSU traveling in all three cases. In 2017, LSU lost at Tulane, 84-74; in 2019 after the Ruston tornado, the Tigers won 83-70 at Louisiana Tech, and, most recently after the hurricane damage in Thibodaux, LSU traveled to Nicholls and scored a 74-62 win.

Since 1952, when games began being counted by the NCAA as exhibitions, the Tigers have won 84 of 97 preseason contests.

While LSU elected to play a closed scrimmage a week ago as one of its two exhibition opportunities, UCF played on Tuesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium against Duke. Duke won the contest, 96-71, over the Knights, expanding on a 1-point halftime lead in the second half.

Two transfers led UCF with over 20 points as senior Riley Kugel, who played last year at Mississippi State, scored 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting with two treys. Also, Jordan Burks, who played last year at Georgetown, added 21 on 9-of-12 shooting with three treys.

The Knights had just 10 turnovers and shot 38.4 percent from the field with eight treys and 7-of-10 at the free throw line. Duke shot 42 percent and was at the free throw line a lot, making 24-of-36.

LSU hasn’t announced a starting lineup for the exhibition game but it would be assumed that Dedan Thomas, Jr., will get the nod at the point guard position. Thomas is a junior who transferred to LSU from UNLV.

It is expected that transfers Marquel Sutton, the Summit League player of the year from Omaha, and Mike Nwoko from Mississippi State will see plenty of minutes in the exhibition with Jalen Reed, a redshirt junior at LSU, continuing to get more floor time in practice as he works back from last season’s ACL injury.

“We are really excited for this opportunity at UCF,” said LSU Coach Matt McMahon. “(UCF) did a tremendous job in the transfer portal, acquiring experienced, talented players so we will get to go up against a really fast paced offensive team.”

“We’ll be more concerned with LSU at the end of the day and I know our players are really looking forward to going against somebody else.”

LSU will open the regular season on Wednesday, Nov. 5, against Tarleton State in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. It will be the first of five games in 16 days for LSU. But besides a test on the court, it will be an opportunity for the Tiger players to learn the ropes on the road.

“We especially wanted to take advantage of going on the road for an exhibition game with so many new faces on our team,” Coach McMahon said. “It allows the players to get that experience, learn what our road trips look like and how we go through our process to prepare for games. We look forward to playing against this really talented UCF team.”

Season tickets, single game non-conference tickets and mini plans information and sales are available at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office and online at LSUTix.net.