Kim Mulkey And LSU Women’s Basketball Are Going Back To The Drawing Board After Loss To South Carolina

By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter

At the start of the month, it looked like the No. 6 LSU women’s basketball team had a chance to compete for its first Southeastern Conference regular-season title since 2008. But the Tigers’ chances of doing so have dwindled significantly after suffering their 18th straight loss to No. 3 South Carolina on Valentine’s Day.

No. 6 LSU Women’s Basketball Drops 18th Straight Game To No. 3 South Carolina, Falling 79-72

Despite outrebounding South Carolina (25-2, 11-1 Southeastern Conference) by nine and making the same number of field goals, LSU (22-4, 8-4 SEC) still came up short after failing to close out another back-and-forth game. The Tigers missed nine free throws, including the potential go-ahead attempts with 45 seconds remaining.

“If you look at the stat sheet, I can’t be too critical of too many things,” Mulkey said after the loss on Saturday. “We didn’t turn it over much. We outrebounded them. We got to the foul line more than them. 44 seconds to go, you take the lead, make one defensive stop, and we’d be sitting here celebrating. This game is tough, and yeah, when you do get that many rebounds, you would think you’re going to win.”

Now LSU finds itself in a familiar position, needing to bounce back from another tough loss before a top-20 matchup in Oxford against No. 17 Ole Miss (20-6, 7-4 SEC) on Thursday night at the Sandy and John Black Pavilion (8 p.m., ESPN).

Even though LSU missed out on another opportunity to build its résumé on Saturday, senior guard Flau’jae Johnson views the setback as another learning opportunity heading into the final regular-season games.

“Nick Saban said, ‘Never waste a failure.’ So we’re not going to waste this loss,” Johnson said after the loss to South Carolina. “We definitely got to learn from it and grow from it. And the vets, we really got to be intentional about these last couple of games.”  

So how can the Tigers learn from such a gut-wrenching loss?

For starters, Johnson believes improving in several areas will be key.

“I think it’s continuing to focus on the little things and holding each other accountable,” Johnson said. “These close games, you never want to lose them, but it’s not one thing at the end of the day. It’s an accumulation of things that we could do better.”

In addition to missing nine free throws, LSU shot 29.3% (12-of-41) from the field in the second half.

Junior guard Mikaylah Williams believes the the loss will show the team how crucial it is to play a complete game rather than in spurts.

“I think some of us have to just look in the mirror and down the stretch, bow our neck in order to stop dropping these close games,” Williams said after the loss on Saturday. “Doing what we need to do early in the game, so it doesn’t come down to free throws at the end of the game. So, I think just taking care of our business in the first half so we don’t have to do all that fighting in the back end.”

Opponents have outscored the Tigers 82–59 in the fourth quarter across their four losses this season.

Moving forward, if LSU wants to find success not only in its remaining regular-season games but also in the postseason, it will need to prove it can close out games – something that has been a recurring issue in all four of its losses this season.