BATON ROUGE — Two of the hottest teams in all of women’s college basketball will battle on Friday as 11th-ranked LSU travels to face 24th-ranked Tulane at noon at Fogelman Arena.
The contest will be broadcast by the LSU Sports Network and can be heard in the Baton Rouge area 107.3 FM. The game can also be heard on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
LSU enters the contest with a 10-1 overall mark and the Lady Tigers have won 10 straight games since opening the season with a loss at Texas Tech.
LSU is coming off of one of its best performances of the year as the Lady Tigers trounced Jackson State, 103-35, in Baton Rouge on Tuesday. Tulane is off to the best start in school history with a perfect 11-0 mark after wins over Providence and West Virginia earlier this week.
LSU leads the overall series with the Greenies, 20-2, and oddly enough this will be the first time both teams enter the contest ranked in the top 25. Last year, LSU posted an 81-54 win over Tulane in Baton Rouge. Tulane’s last win over LSU came in 1997 in New Orleans by a 65-54 count. LSU has won nine of the 10 games between the teams at Fogelman Arena.
LSU coach Sue Gunter enters Friday’s contest with 598 career wins, leaving her just two victories shy of becoming only the fourth women’s basketball coach in NCAA history to win 600 games in a career.
Friday’s contest will pit two of the top seniors in the nation in LSU’s Katrina Hibbert and Tulane’s Grace Daley. Daley’s 24.1 points a contest ranks among the top five in the nation, while Hibbert is averaging 14.4 points and 7.8 assists, the nation’s second-best total. Daley is also averaging 6.3 rebounds and 2.1 steals a contest, while Hibbert is shooting 46.3 percent from 3-point range and her 3.7 steals a game ranks second in the Southeastern Conference.
“Daley is probably one of the premier shooting guards in the nation,” Gunter said. “She’s a complete player. She has great ability to penetrate and finish and she can shoot the three-pointer. She’s outstanding.
“The thing that we have to realize that Tulane is anything but a one player team. Grace is their catalyst, but they are still a very balanced team with a lot of talent.”
While Hibbert and Daley may be the two marquee players for each team, both squads have outstanding supporting casts.
For LSU, the Lady Tigers have three other players averaging in double-figures in scoring led by 5-9 junior guard Marie Ferdinand, who ranks second in the SEC with 18.2 points. Ferdinand’s 3.9 steals a game lead the league. Other LSU players averaging in double-figures are starters April Brown and DeTrina White.
Brown, a 5-11 junior forward, is third on the squad with 11.9 points a game, while White, a 5-11 sophomore center, is averaging 11.0 points and 8.6 rebounds, a number that ranks fourth in the SEC.
Rounding out the LSU starting lineup will be 5-11 junior point guard Angelia Crockett. Crockett is 6-0 as LSU’s starting point guard and she’s averaging just under seven assists over the Lady Tigers’ last four games.
Against Jackson State, Crockett had her best game of the year with 10 points and a career-best nine assists. Crockett is averaging 3.8 points and 3.6 assists a game.
Janell Burse, a 6-5 junior center, is averaging 20.2 points a contest making the Greenies just one of a handful of teams from across the nation with two players scoring at least 20 points a game. Rounding out the Tulane lineup will be 6-0 senior forward Fabrecia Roberson (9.8 points, 7.6 rebounds), 5-8 sophomore guard Sarah Goree (6.2, 2.0) and 5-9 junior Kelly Scanlon (2.9, 2.3).
“This is going to be a highly-competitive game,” Gunter said. “Tulane is very worthy of their ranking and we can talk about all the things that we have to look to in regard to stopping them, but they also have a few things that they have to address in regard to us. I just think it’s going to be a heckuva basketball game.”