BATON ROUGE — After knocking off two higher seeds in the first two rounds of the “Big Dance,” LSU and Duke will meet in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. CST. The Lady Tigers practiced for 2 1/2 hours Wednesday afternoon before leaving town Thursday afternoon.
The game will be shown live on ESPN2.
The Lady Tigers (24-6) have reached the Sweet 16 for the second consecutive season. Last year, the fourth-seeded Lady Tigers were eliminated by top-seeded Louisiana Tech, 73-52, in Los Angeles.
This season, LSU is the third seed in the East Region. The winner of the LSU-Duke game will play the winner of the other regional semifinal between top-ranked Connecticut and sixth-seeded Oklahoma.
LSU is led by a group of four players who have started all 30 games this season: Katrina Hibbert, Marie Ferdinand, April Brown and DeTrina White.
Each averages more than 10 points per game and more than 27.6 minutes per game, and each shoots better than 48.4 percent from the field this season. White leads the team in shooting at 60.4 percent, while Ferdinand scores 17.4 per game to pace the team.
The Duke Blue Devils (28-5) finished second in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season with a 12-4 league record.
Forward Georgia Schweitzer leads the team in scoring with more than 15 points per game, however, the team’s second-leading scorer, Peppi Browne, will not play due to a season-ending injury earlier in the season.
In 36 minutes against Western Kentucky the last time out, Schweitzer scored 25 points on 8-of-17 shooting including 7-of-8 from the charity stripe. Teammate Sheana Mosch, a 5-10 freshman guard, matched Schweitzer’s performance with 25 points of her own in the second-round win. Mosch hit 7-of-12 from the field against the Hilltoppers and 11-of-11 from the free throw line.
Duke finished the game making 26-of-30 (86.7 percent) free throws to advance to play the Lady Tigers in the Sweet 16.
The Blue Devils average 74.8 points per game while allowing only 55.8. LSU averages 68.9 and allows 56.2.
Duke has won five straight games, including wins over 15th-seeded Campbell (71-42) and 10th-seeded Western Kentucky (90-70). Before the NCAA Tournament, Duke won the ACC Tournament Championship over North Carolina, 79-76.