JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Tremont Waters, LSU’s All-SEC first-team guard, was simultaneously stunned and pleasantly surprised.

Sitting with his teammates Sunday afternoon watching the NCAA Tournament selection show, he couldn’t believe it when it was revealed the third-seed Tigers’ opening East Region opponent was 14th seed Yale.

Yale?

“If I had a strong arm, I could probably throw a rock from my house and I could hit Yale’s basketball facilities,” said Waters, a sophomore from New Haven, Connecticut, before the Tigers’ public workout here Wednesday in VyStar Veterans Memorial Coliseum. “They’re like my neighbors. I ever needed to put shots, that’s where I would go. It’s where I really started playing, it’s where I developed my workouts. I actually shot a basketball training video when I was in the seventh grade and it was in one of their gyms.”

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Waters also played on the same AAU team as current Yale starting forward Jordan Bruner and Yale reserve guard Azar Swain.

More than any other player on LSU's 26-6 Southeastern Conference championship squad, Waters is well aware that the 22-7 Ivy League tourney champion Bulldogs aren’t a stereotypical Ivy League team that supposedly has average athletes playing a plodding, disciplined style.

“I was telling our guys that they (Yale) have a lot of guys you can’t sleep on,” Waters said. “(Miyi) Oni is a beast in transition. (Alex) Copeland is an electric guard who pushes the ball a lot.”

LSU prefers to play uptempo, averages 81.4 points and allows 73. Yale likes to also run, averages 81.1 and gives up 73.2.

“We're not going to change a whole lot, we’ve got to do a job of pushing the tempo,” said LSU interim Tony Benford, coaching his third game since head coach Will Wade was indefinitely suspended on March 8 by LSU administrators for refusing to meet about his alleged involvement in a federally investigated national college basketball recruiting scandal.

“We want to play our basketball game, and if that's good enough, it's going to be good enough,” said James Jones, now in his 20th season as Yale’s head coach. "If it's not, it's not."

Both teams also have motivations specific to their circumstances.

With the loss of Wade and then a first-game exit from the SEC tourney after losing to Florida last Friday, there’s the general feeling from the national media that the Tigers can’t pull out of what is perceived as a downward spiral.

“We lost our brother (the preseason murder of LSU forward Wayde Sims), we lost our coach, we lost so much and people want us to go down,” Tigers’ freshman forward Emmitt Williams said. “As you can see, we’re not got going to give up. We’re going to keep pushing.”

Yale’s ever-present chip-on-its-shoulder is continuous questions whether it is athletic enough to play and win with a running style of offense against major college conference teams such as LSU..

“We’re excited to go show people that we’re a better transition team that a lot of these quote-unquote high majors that are here,” said Copeland, a senior guard averaging 13.8 points after scoring a team-leading 25 points in Yale’s 97-85 win over Harvard in last Sunday’s Ivy League tourney finals to earn an automatic NCAA tourney invite. “There’s not anything that necessarily concerns us (about LSU). They are a really athletic team and we’ll have to contend with that. But we’re just going to play our game and we’re excited to see if we can make something happen.”