BATON ROUGE — Ke-Ke Tardy led six LSU players in double-figures with 19
points as the 22nd-ranked Lady Tigers cruised past North Carolina-Asheville, 91-36, here Tuesday at the Maravich Assembly Center.
With the win, the Lady Tigers improve to 1-1 overall, while the Bulldogs
dropped to 0-2. The win extended LSU’s home-court winning streak against non-conference teams to 37 straight. Overall, LSU has won 10 straight at home.
The Lady Tigers set two school records and tied another. LSU set a school-record with 38 assists, bettering the previous mark of 32 set twice. LSU also committed only four personal fouls, which is a school record and the Lady Tigers tied the school-record with only six turnovers.
“We went into the game wanting to accomplish a couple of things and I thought we did,” LSU coach Sue Gunter said. “We wanted to get a lot of people some minutes, and we did, and I wanted to keep the game from getting sloppy and we did that too. I wanted us to stay focused and get the job and I think we did a nice job of doing that.
“Overall, we played really well. We needed something positive to happen to our basketball team and tonight it did. We had a lot of people perform very well.”
Joining Tardy in double-figures for the Lady Tigers were Marie Ferdinand with 17 points, Katrina Hibbert with 13, DeTrina White with 11, and April Brown and Jamie Hawkins with 10 each. Hibbert also set a career-high with 13 assists, one shy of tying the school mark set by Brenda McGuffie in 1977. Kaisha Lymon led the Lady Tigers with 10 rebounds.
The game was decided in the first five minutes as the Lady Tigers scored the first 11 points of the contest, capped on a jumper by Ferdinand at the 16:12 mark. North Carolina-Asheville’s first points came at the 14:58 mark when Jessica Guarneri scored in the paint.
From there, the Lady Tigers stretched the margin to 30-9 on a 3-pointer by Hibbert from the top of the key at the 7:33 mark. LSU led 43-17 at halftime.
In the second half, the Lady Tiger lead hit 30 points on a layup by Brown at the 18:58 mark and the LSU advantage stretched to 41 at 67-26 on a basket by White with 11:17 left in the contest. The final margin of 55 points marks the fourth largest margin of victory in school history.
Gillian Murray led North Carolina-Asheville with 14 points, while Guarneri added 11 for the Bulldogs.
LSU returns to action on Friday when the face St. Bonaventure in the first round of the Walnut Creek Holiday Inn Thanksgiving Classic in Moraga, Calif.