BATON ROUGE — Marie Ferdinand led four LSU starters with 22 points as the Lady Tigers overcame a sluggish first half performance to beat Liberty, 77-54, here Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the Maravich Assembly Center.
With the win, the third-seeded Lady Tigers (23-6) advance to Sunday
‘s second round contest against 11th-seeded Stephen F. Austin (28-3), a 73-72 winner over sixth-seeded Xavier (26-5) in Friday’s other first round contest.
Joining Ferdinand in double-figures for the Lady Tigers were April Brown with 18 points, DeTrina White with 13 and Katrina Hibbert with 11. Hibbert and Ferdinand added six assists each for the Lady Tigers.
The win also stretched LSU’s non-conference home court winning streak to 46 straight, a streak that dates back to the 1995 season. LSU is now 7-1 all-time in NCAA Tournament games at the Maravich Assembly Center.
Sharon Wilkerson, the Big South Player of the Year this season, led the Flames with 16 points, while Elena Kisseleva added 13. Liberty finished its season with a 23-8 mark.
“My hat goes off to Liberty,” LSU coach Sue Gunter said. “They have a fine team and they are very well-coached. They worked hard in the first half and made it as tough as it gets for us.
“I told the team yesterday, and again before the game, that if we don’t defend and don’t rebound and value the basketball, then we’ll get beat. We did two of the three.”
In the first half, the Lady Tigers opened the game by outscoring the Flames 12-2 over the first five minutes. However, LSU center DeTrina White picked up her second foul at the 13:46 mark and was forced to spend the rest of the half on the bench. As a result, Liberty began to chip away at the Lady Tiger lead. The Flames pulled to within 22-21 on a jumper by Sarah Farley at the 4:13 mark. The Flames then took their first lead of the game, 24-23, a minute later on a 3-pointer by Wilkerson.
The lead exchanged hands four times over the final three minutes before Ferdinand converted on a layup with 36.3 seconds left to give the Lady Tigers a 29-28 advantage at halftime.
“I thought we played one good half,” Liberty coach Carey Green said. “The second half obviously we couldn’t match the offensive intensity LSU had. They shot a good percentage and its hard to win when you give up 48 points.”
In the second half, the score remained close until the 14-minute mark when Brown hit a jumper to put LSU up six and she added another basket to stretch the lead to 40-32 a minute later. Ferdinand’s 17-foot jumper at the 12:40 mark gave the Lady Tigers a 42-32 advantage, their first double-figure lead since the opening minutes.
Liberty pulled back to within eight twice, the latest coming at 44-36 after a basket by Rachel Young with 11:25 left in the game. From there, it was all LSU as the Lady Tigers scored the game’s next eight points, to take its their biggest lead, 52-36, on another jumper by Brown with 9:39 left. The LSU lead hit 20 points, 59-39, at the 6:39 mark after a steal and layup by Ferdinand. LSU?s biggest lead was 26 points, 71-45.
“We came out more energized in the second half,” Gunter said. “April Brown came out in the second half and her shots were falling and that made her more comfortable. The others fed off that. “The other thing that really helped us was having DeTrina White on the floor. She’s a big part of our team and we do things differently when she is not on the floor. She changes the game when she’s out on the floor and
not on the bench.”
For the game, the Lady Tigers shot 57.1 percent, including 66.7 percent in the second half, while holding the Flames to just 30.9 percent for the game and only 25 percent in the final stanza. LSU also turned the ball over just 12 times, compared to 18 for the Flames.
Tipoff for Sunday’s second round contest is set for 7:35 p.m. and the game can be seen in the Baton Rouge area on College Sports-Southeast.