By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
For the fourth consecutive season, Kim Mulkey has her LSU women’s basketball team in the Sweet 16. The second-seeded Tigers will face third-seed Duke on Friday night at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento (9 p.m., ESPN), a rematch of LSU’s 93-77 win in Durham in December.
LSU’s offense turned heads in the opening weekend, scoring 100-plus points in both NCAA Tournament games. But while the scoring grabbed attention, assistant coach Joe Schwartz said the defense stood out most.
“It was a sight to see,” Schwartz said on Tiger Rag Radio on Tuesday night. “Just defensively holding a team like Texas Tech to 47 points was their season low. Talking on defense, communicating with each other, communicating with the coaching staff on matchups, and then just the level of execution, ball screen defense, uh transition defense. It all starts with defense.”
The Tigers allowed just 58 points to Jacksonville and 47 to Texas Tech, and Schwartz believes that defensive consistency must travel west.
“You hope your offense travels, but the only chance that we can really count on winning or having a chance to win these next two games is our defense,” Schwartz said. “We hope we make shots, but you got to control what you can control and that starts on the defensive end. And I think we’re really locked in right now.”
That defensive effort has fueled LSU’s offense. The Tigers scored 29 fast-break points against Jacksonville and 24 against Texas Tech, thriving in transition rather than relying heavily on half-court sets.
“When you don’t have to run offense and set up in the half court, it’s so much more exciting and it allows your guards to do what they do best and that’s get out and run and make layups and showtime,” Schwartz said. “I mean, we call ourselves ‘the show’ and it’s not to boast or brag about who we are. It’s literally our style of play. It’s behind-the-back passes. It’s running out after a long rebound. It’s one through four players bringing it up the court and it allows us to one have other teams on their heels because when you’ve got someone like Jada (Richard) or MiLaysia (Fulwiley) pushing the ball up the floor and then wings like Flau’jae, Mikaylah, Bella running, it gets you easy opportunities to score or get to the free throw line.”
Mulkey’s team is also benefiting from its depth. LSU played nine players in both tournament games, and that balance makes the Tigers difficult to defend – especially when Flau’jae Johnson and Mikaylah Williams are scoring.
“What their scoring does is force teams to make decisions,” Scwartz said. “And there’s some hard decisions to make when Flau’jae’s got 15, Mikaylah’s got 15, Jada’s got 10, Kate has eight, Grace has six. We’ve got so many options. And you got to pick and choose who you’re going to try and stop. And when we’re all clicking, I think you can see how dangerous this team can be.”
As LSU prepares for Duke, that depth will be key against a Blue Devils team that has held opponents to 55.7 points per game since December. Caroline Fenton of Yahoo Sports expects a different matchup this time around.
“Duke has really upgraded and elevated their defensive game throughout the course of ACC play,” Fenton said on Tiger Rag Radio on Tuesday. “But on the other side, LSU is a better defensive team, too. I mean, Duke shot 50% from the field in that matchup. And Duke is not a good enough offensive team to let them shoot 50% from the field. So, while we’ve seen this match up before, it does feel different because both of these teams have evolved so much throughout the course of the last three months.”
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