BATON ROUGE, La. — The 23rd-ranked LSU Lady Tigers, coming off an 82-39 win over the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on Tuesday night at the Maravich Assembly Center took to the road again Wednesday for Thursday’s Southeastern Conference opener at Georgia.
The Tigers and the Lady Bulldogs, ranked second in the nation, do battle at 6:30 p.m. CST at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Ga. The game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network with 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge carrying the Tiger broadcast.
For the Tigers, it continues a long run of games which finds them playing four games in less than a week, three of them on the road, but it wasn’t a game they really expected to be playing.
Georgia had some conflicts involving a television date in January when the game was originally scheduled and the league moved the game to this date, the only SEC contest of the month of December.
So there is concern in LSU Coach Sue Gunter‘s voice as she hopes the execution of her team will be better than what she saw on Tuesday against Louisiana-Lafayette.
“I was disappointed in the way we played,” she said. “We just didn’t do the things that we wanted to in the game as part of our preparation for Georgia. We were sluggish and the intensity and the focus just wasn’t there.”
LSU did have more than enough for the Cajuns, getting a season-high 22 points from senior Katrina Hibbert, with DeTrina White adding 14 points and 12 rebounds for her first double-double of the season. Hibbert and White were two of the big scorers for the Tigers in last year’s loss to Georgia with Hibbert getting 19 points and 10 rebounds with White adding 12 points and 13 rebounds.
But the competition level will be much higher against the 7-0 Lady Bulldogs who are coming off a 102-70 road win at Georgia Southern on Tuesday night.
“This team we are playing is No. 2 in the country, they were in the Final Four last year and they have all five starters back. We’re playing them on their floor, so all the odds are stacked against us.
“But I am going to turn around and say this: it is one of those games in which John Q. Public and the media does not expect us to win the game. There is more pressure on them and yet, if we could pull off a win, it is monstrous for us,” Gunter said.
Georgia leads the overall series, 15-6, and the Lady Bulldogs gave LSU its only home loss of last season with a 73-60 decision in Baton Rouge. LSU’s last win in Athens was during the 1991-92 season.