By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, TIGER RAG STAFF Writer
The No. 5 LSU women’s basketball team (9-0) hits the road again this Sunday as the Tigers take about an hour drive down I-10 to face a winless, but hungry New Orleans Privateers team (0-7) at Lakefront Arena (3 p.m. CT, ESPN+).
LSU is coming off of its biggest win yet as the Bayou Bengals took down Duke (3-6) by a score of 93-77 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina on Thursday evening.
The Tigers faced adversity for the first time this season after going down by 14 points early in the first quarter. With the help of several players, including junior guard MiLaysia Fulwiley, LSU was able to pull within four points as it went into the second quarter down 24-20. Head coach Kim Mulkey and her team used a productive second quarter to take the lead at halftime after outscoring the Blue Devils 31-19 in the second period. Mulkey credited her team’s poise to storm back on the road.
“I think it’s just confidence that we have,” Mulkey said after the win. “Even though we’re inexperienced with a lot of new players, they all are very confident. They’re not afraid to fail. We got better in rebounding the ball. We quit turning it over. We kind of helped contribute to that hot start for them and I think we just settled in.”
LSU didn’t continue its eight game streak of scoring 100-plus points in games, but it did extend its streak of having five or more players score in the double-digits for the ninth straight game: senior guard Flau’jae Johnson (18), junior guard MiLaysia Fulwiley (16), junior guard Mikaylah Williams and senior forward Amiya Joyner (14), sophomore forward Kate Koval (13) and freshman forward Grace Knox (12).
Sophomore guard Jada Richard said all of the Tigers can score, so for opponents, it’s pick your poison.
“I think we have a lot of weapons,” Richard said. “I think anybody can get hot at any given moment. It’s just a matter of who it is and just feeding them the ball. So, I think just us all pulling for each other. No one really cares who’s on fire, who’s getting the shots, who’s shining, I think we all just want to win and I think that’s the biggest thing for us.”
After storming their way back from down 14, Richard says the Tigers learned a lot about each other in the 16-point victory.
“I think togetherness. When everybody’s on the same page, we can conquer anything. I think Duke, they’re a great team and they jumped on us early, but we never really lost our composure. We kind of stayed poised, stayed together as a team. If we stay together, then we can do whatever we want.”
New Orleans is led by third-year head coach Trelanne Powell. LSU leads the series against New Orleans (7-0) with the latest matchup dating back to 2019, when the Tigers won by a score of 83-49.
LSU and UNO were scheduled to play in 2022, but the game was cancelled.
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