BATON ROUGE — It’s still early in the conference season but Thursday’s game between the 15th-ranked LSU women’s basketball team and Kentucky could go along way in determining the top three places in the Southeastern Conference come season’s end.
Tipoff for the contest is set for 7 p.m. CST at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington. The game will be televised live by Fox Sports and its can be seen in the Baton Rouge area on cable channel 26. The game will also be broadcast by the LSU Sports Network, 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge, as well as the Internet at www.LSUSports.net.
LSU enters the contest riding a two-game SEC winning streak as the Lady Tigers are tied atop the league standings with a 3-1 mark. LSU is 12-3 overall. Kentucky is also 3-1 in the league after the Wildcats beat Arkansas, 68-60, on Sunday. LSU’s last action came against Arkansas, an 82-69 win in Fayetteville last Thursday. Kentucky is 11-5 overall. In all, five SEC teams enter Thursday’s round of games with a 3-1 mark. Joining LSU and Kentucky in a first place tie in the SEC are Tennessee, Georgia and Auburn.
“Kentucky really has an impressive team,” said LSU coach Sue Gunter, who won the 600th game of her career last week at Arkansas. “It’s still so early in the conference schedule, but it’s very interesting to see that you have almost half of the league tied for first.
“There are a lot of ramifications for this game. It’s being televised, Kentucky is still looking for a chance to crack into the top 25 and that respect. Not matter how we look at it though, it only counts one game in the scheme of things. You can’t get carried away or caught up in the standings yet, but it would be different if we were playing this game in February.”
LSU enters the contest coming off one of its better offensive performances of the season against Arkansas as the Lady Tigers turned the ball over nine times, while shooting just under 50 percent from the field. DeTrina White, a 5-11 sophomore center, scored a career-best 27 points to go with 12 rebounds against the Lady’Backs for her fourth straight double-double. White leads the SEC with 9.3 rebounds a game as well as six double-doubles for the year.
“DeTrina is really playing well,” Gunter said. “She’s just doing an outstanding job and the way she plays is contagious. She plays with so much energy and that rubs off on the others.”
Joining White in the Lady Tiger lineup will be 5-11 junior guard Angelia Crockett (4.0 points, 3.8 assists), 5-9 junior guard Marie Ferdinand (17.7 points, 4.9 rebounds), 5-11 senior guard/forward Katrina Hibbert (13.8 points, 6.9 assists) and 5-11 junior forward April Brown (11.1 points, 4.9 rebounds).
Hibbert leads the SEC in assists, while Ferdinand ranks second in the league in scoring and assists.
Last year, LSU and Kentucky split a pair of meetings with the Lady Tigers winning 67-59 in Baton Rouge in January and the Wildcats coming back with an 81-71 victory in the second round of the SEC Tournament in February. LSU is 12-7 all-time against Kentucky, which includes a 4-2 mark in Lexington.
Against Kentucky, the Lady Tigers will face a team that starts three players 6-1 or taller, which includes 6-3 junior forward Laura Meadow (12.3 points, 7.2 rebounds) and 6-4 senior center Shantia Owens (9.9, 8.0). Rounding out the Kentucky lineup is 5-6 senior guard Erica Jackson (11.1, 3.0) , 5-10 senior guard Tiffany Wait (9.1, 2.1) and 6-1 sophomore forward LaTonya McDole (12.1, 5.9).
“They are very experienced,” Gunter said. “They basically have the same team as last year because they lost only one player of any consequence. I’ll match their starting five with anybody in the conference. They’re that good.
“One thing that they’ve added this year in depth. They have the good inside-outside game and good defense. They’re just a good team.”
Gunter said that one key to the game is LSU’s ability to keep Kentucky off the boards. LSU ranks last in the SEC in rebounds as the Lady Tigers have been outrebounded in 11 of their 15 games.
“We’re going to have to play them even on the boards,” Gunter said. “By doing that, we’ll keep them out of second chance points. If we can keep them out of transition we’ll be in good shape. They’re a very good transition team.”
After Thursday, the Lady Tigers return to action on Sunday as they play host to Ole Miss at 2 p.m. at the Maravich Assembly Center. The Ole Miss game will serve as Alumni Day for LSU as over 30 former players and managers will be in attendance at the game, including two-time Kodak All-America Joyce Walker, who is coming in all the way from Seattle, Wash., for the event.