BATON ROUGE — LSU’s dominance over the University of Louisiana-Lafayette continued on Tuesday as the 23rd-ranked Lady Tigers raced out to a 19-4 lead and never looked back in their 82-39 win over the Lady Cajuns here at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The win was the fourth straight for the Lady Tigers, who improved to 4-1 overall. UL-Lafayette, who was off to its best start since 1988, fell to 2-1. The win also marked LSU’s 18th straight over the Lady Cajuns as the Lady Tigers improved their series record to 18-0 against UL-Lafayette.
Katrina Hibbert led the Lady Tigers with a season-high 22 points, which included a 4-of-6 performance from 3-point range. Hibbert, who leads the Southeastern Conference with 9.0 assists per game, led the Lady Tigers with eight assists.
Marie Ferdinand added 15 points,w hile Lafayette native DeTrina White registered her first double-double of the season with 14 points and 12 rebounds. April Brown rounded out the double-figure scorers for LSU with 12 points.
“I’m disappointed in the way we played,” LSU coach Sue Gunter said. “We just didn’t do the things that we wanted to in this game as part of our preparation for Georgia on Thursday. We were sluggish. The intensity and the focus just wasn’t there.
“We just never could seem to get it going. There were so many little things that we didn’t do and those little things can become big things in a hurry if you’re not careful.”
Despite the sluggish performance by LSU, the Lady Cajuns were no match for the Lady Tigers. LSU wasted little time jumping on UL-Lafayette as Hibbert scored nine points in a four-minute span to stretch the Lady Tiger lead from 10-4 at the 16:52 mark to 19-4 at the 12:27 mark after she drilled a 10-foot jumper. Hibbert hit a layup at the 6:14 mark to push the lead to 28-8 and she hit a 3-pointer at the first half buzzer to give the Lady Tigers a 42-17 lead at the break.
Hibbert alone outscored the Lady Cajuns in the first half as she scored 19 of LSU’s 42 first half points, compared to UL-Lafayette’s 17 points in the first half. UL-Lafayette also had more first half turnovers than points as they turned the ball over 20 times in the opening period.
“It was a pretty ugly game on our part,” UL-Lafayette coach Gay Nix said. “LSU played great. They jumped on us early and they forced us to turn the ball over more than we would like to.”
In the second half, the Lady Tigers stretched the margin to 31 points at 48-17 at the 15:32 mark on a basket by White underneath and then back-to-back baskets by Ferdinand increased the margint to 52-17 a minute later. A lull by the Lady Tigers ove the next five minutes let the Lady Cajuns get to within 55-31 on a 3-point basket by Beata Smoralek.
LSU then regained the momentum as the Lady Tigers outscored the Lady Cajuns 27-8 over the final 10 mintues of the contest.
“We had way too many turnovers in the second half,” Gunter said. “It was a frustrating evening, but I will not minimize that it was a win and I realize the score was convincing. Still we did not put together the type of game that I would have liked for us to put together and I don’t know why.”
For the game, LSU connected on 47 percent from the field, while limiting the Lady Cajuns to just 26 percent shooting and forcing UL-Lafayette to turn the ball over 35 times. LSU commited 16 turnovers.