by Chris Macaluso
LSUsports.net
BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s Basketball team won its third-straight game Tuesday night with a 75-47 victory over the Mercer Bears at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The win improved the Lady Tigers’ record to 5-3 and was the 50th straight non-conference home win for LSU. Mercer fell to 1-8.
“It was a win,” said LSU head coach Sue Gunter. “Probably we didn’t play the way we’d have liked to have played. But it’s better than the alternative.”
Marie Ferdinand led the way for the Lady Tigers with 22 points and five rebounds. Tiger Point-Guard Kisha James added 10 points and five rebounds.
Lady Tiger forward Detrina White scored eight points and added six rebounds in just her second game of the year. White was sidelined earlier with a back injury.
Forward April Dyer was the high scorer for Mercer with 11 points.
The Lady Tigers continued to improve from the free-throw line, hitting 14-15 from the charity stripe. Ferdinand was a perfect 6-6 from the line.
LSU’s tenacious defense kept the Bears in the single-digits in scoring most of the first half. With less than eight minutes to play in the first, Mercer had scored just four points while committing four personal fouls.
The Bears finally reached double-digits at the 3:37 mark when guard Jo Shaw made the score 31-11 LSU with a short jumper.
“I thought early in the first half we did a nice job defensively,” Gunter said. “Our pressure was good and we continued to work on that because I feel like it’s something that down the road is going to be terrifically important to us.”
The LSU offense played well enough to maintain at least a 20-point lead throughout most of the game. The Lady Tigers hit 16-29 shots from the floor in the first half, staking themselves to a 37-17 halftime lead despite being out-rebounded 14-12 for the half and 30-29 for the game.
Mercer scored six of the first eight points of the second half to cut the Lady Tiger lead to 39-23 with 17:23 to play. But a steal and subsequent lay-up by Ferdinand put and end to the brief Bear rally.
LSU shot 50 percent from the floor for the game while holding Mercer to just 17-43 from the floor for the game for just 39.5 percent.
The Lady Tiger’s face a tough task in their next game when they travel to West Lafayette, Ind. to take on third-ranked Purdue Dec. 16 at 3 p.m.