BATON ROUGE — It’s been nearly 13 years since an LSU women’s basketball team has won four straight Southeastern Conference games. That can change on Sunday as the 14th-ranked Lady Tigers will look to extend their SEC winning streak to four straight when they play host to Ole Miss at 2 p.m. at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The game will also serve as Alumni Day for the Lady Tigers as over 30 former LSU players and managers are in town for the weekend. Included in the list of players that will be in attendance on Sunday are Rhonda Hawthorne, a player on Sue Gunter‘s first LSU team, as well as nine members of the Lady Tigers’ 1991 SEC Tournament Championship team.
Sunday’s contest will be broadcast by the LSU Sports Network and can be heard in the Baton Rouge area on 107.3 FM. The game can also be heard world-wide on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
LSU enters the contest leading the SEC with a 4-1 league mark. The Lady Tigers, who are 13-3 overall, have won three of their four conference games on the road. Since it’s 86-50 loss to Tennessee on Jan. 6, the Lady Tigers have reeled off league wins over Mississippi State, Arkansas and Kentucky. LSU’s 4-1 start marks the third time in the last four years in which the Lady Tigers have won four of their first five conference games.
Ole Miss has lost three of its last four games and the Lady Rebels are 11-5 overall and 0-3 in the league. Ole Miss, who beat LSU last year, 66-59, in Oxford, is coming off a 69-67 defeat to Alabama on Thursday.
“The thing that I’m really worried about right now is that we are focused,” LSU coach Sue Gunter said. “When you look at Ole Miss’ record and you see who they’ve played, they’re a good team. They cleaned our clock last year. We did not adjust to anything they did defensively and we didn’t do a very good job of shutting them down on offense.
“For us, going back to the Tulane game, it’s been one game after the other. We have not had a break. For the past five games it’s been ‘be ready, focus, concentrate and go’. What we have to realize is that this is a very good Ole Miss team coming in here and we better be ready to play. To come in here and not be ready for Ole Miss will negate what we’ve already done.”
Sunday’s game will match the league’s top rebounding team in Ole Miss against the Lady Tigers, a team that ranks last in the SEC in rebounds. Ole Miss averages 45.2 rebounds a contest, while the Lady Tigers are averaging just 36.0 boards a contest. LSU has outrebounded its last two opponents, which includes holding Kentucky to just 29 rebounds on Thursday, the lowest total by an SEC against the Lady Tigers in nearly two years.
LSU does however have the league’s top rebounder in 5-foot-11 sophomore center DeTrina White. White, who has had double-figure rebounds in seven straight games, is averaging 9.4 boards a game, which includes an 11.1 average over the last seven games.
“We have done a better job of rebounding over the last couple of games,” Gunter said. “We are going to have to do another good job of rebounding on Sunday. Ole Miss just keeps go after it on both ends of the floor so we’ll have to keep them off glass.”
Joining White in the starting lineup for the Lady Tigers will be 5-11 junior guard Angelia Crockett (4.4 points, 3.7 assists), 5-9 junior guard Marie Ferdinand (17.7 points, 4.3 rebounds), 5-11 senior guard/forward Katrina Hibbert (13.8 points, 6.6 assists) and 5-11 junior forward April Brown (11.6 points, 4.8 rebounds).
Ferdinand ranks second in the SEC in scoring and assists, while Hibbert leads the league in assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.
Ole Miss is paced by 6-4 senior center Frankie Boyd, who is averaging 14.2 points and 6.1 rebounds a game. Other Ole Miss starters are 5-3 junior guard Chandra Dorsey (3.9 points, 2.2 rebounds), 5-8 junior guard Becky Myatt (9.4, 4.1), 6-1 senior forward Sinissia Wysinger (4.6, 5.8) and 5-10 sophomore forward Von-Gretchen Kirk (9.6, 3.9).