Tiger Watch: A weekly spotlight at what’s going on in LSU athletics

Augustus’ jersey retired against Lady Vols:

The LSU women’s basketball team’s most decorated player of all-time, Seimone Augustus, received one of LSU’s highest praises last Sunday when the school retired her jersey.

Augustus was an All-American all four of her seasons in Baton Rouge and won the National Player of the Year award twice.

Prior to Augustus’ arrival, no Lady Tiger had ever won the award.

The life-long Baton Rouge native is one of just nine people to have their jersey retired. The others to be given the honor are Pete Maravich, Bob Pettit, Rudy Macklin and Shaquille O’Neal in basketball; Billy Cannon and Tommy Casanova in football; and Skip Bertman and Ben McDonald in baseball.

“It is an honor to be able to be the first female basketball player to have her jersey retired (at LSU),” Augustus said. “It is humbling to know that my jersey will forever hang in the rafters with players like Bob Pettit, Shaq and Pete Maravich.”

The school has a policy that athletes must be removed from LSU for five years before considered for the honor.

But the school waived that policy to allow Augustus to be honored a year early.

“This is an honor of the highest measure and one which Seimone Augustus truly deserves,” said LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva. “Seimone distinguished herself during her college career as one of the greatest student-athletes in the country and she continues to be a tremendous representative of LSU.”

National Champs back on the field:

Just seven months removed from winning the 2009 National Championship, the LSU baseball team is set to officially begin their quest for a repeat.

The Tigers will begin spring practices on Friday ahead of Feb. 19’s season opening date against the Centenary.

LSU returns 15 players who saw the diamond from last season’s team, including two All-Americans – senior first baseman Blake Dean and junior pitcher Anthony Ranaudo.

The defending national champions will start the season ranked No. 2 in the Collegiate Baseball newspaper preseason poll.

“I have all the confidence in the world that we’ve got the pieces in place to be able to have another outstanding club,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri.

LSU will open the season against Centenary and will play 19 of their first 20 games in Alex Box Stadium in the first month of the season.

Recruiting News:

The LSU football team received a dose of bad news this past week on the recruiting front as four-star Virginia receiver Justin Hunter decommitted from LSU and committed to Tennessee.

According to the receiver’s high school coach, the move was caused by the departure of last season’s wide receivers coach DJ McCarthy.

“After learning, with all of the coaches movement in the off-season, how college coaching and profession goes, he realized playing for just one coach is extremely rare,” Hunter’s high school coach Chris Scott told Tigerbait.com last week. “Therefore, I think being closer to home played a big role in changing in his mind.”

LSU rebounded quickly following Hunter’s decommitment, however and picked up a verbal from four-star Belle Chasse receiver James Wright. Wright is currently the only receiver committed for the 2010 class after the team lost Thibodaux’s Trovon Reed to Auburn.

LSU might also lose California four-star defensive tackle Cassius Marsh, who committed to the Tigers last October.

According to reports, Marsh has expressed concerns about the distance from California to Louisiana.

Marsh has already changed his mind once on the recruiting trail and committed to Cal, before decommitting in May.

Despite the recent setbacks, the Tigers still currently hold the No. 6 recruiting class in the country in Rivals.com‘s recruiting rankings.