BATON ROUGE — The 17th-ranked LSU Lady Tigers held off an upset bid by the Tulane Green Wave to capture a 68-61 victory Sunday afternoon at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU utilized a balanced attack that saw four Lady Tigers reach double figures led by Marie Ferdinand’s 20 point effort. LSU (4-3) and Tulane (4-5) traded leads eight times throughout the afternoon’s contest, but it was the Lady Tigers who found themselves with the lead at the end of regulation.
Tulane was led by center Janell Burse who dominated the LSU front-court collecting 24 points and 19 rebounds in 33 minutes of work. Tulane out-rebounded the Lady Tigers 20-to-13.
“I thought during the first half, the intensity and the momentum was on Tulane’s side,” LSU head coach Sue Gunter said. “I thought they had a good plan, they changed their defense well. They got the ball inside well. They boarded well. They killed us with their second chance shots.”
Burse went to work early scoring Tulane’s first five points en-route to a 9-2 run for the Green Wave to open the game. But Roneeka Hodges answered with a lay-up off the feed from Ferdinand sparking a 7-0 run for the Tigers tying the game, 9-9, with 14:53 left in the first half.
R. Hodges finished the game 15 points including a 4-of-6 effort from the fee-throw line. Doneeka Hodges came off the bench to hit a clutch three at the 12:45 mark giving LSU just it’s second lead of the game 12-11. The Lady Tigers extended their largest lead of the half, 20-15, when junior DeTrina White knocked in her first points of the season at the 8:57 mark.
White saw her first action of the season after missing the Lady Tigers’ first six games do to a back injury. The 5-11 center was a tremendous lift inside for LSU gathering nine rebounds in 28 minutes.
But the Green Wave battled back and regained the lead on a lay-up by Burse giving Tulane a 26-25 lead that they would not relinquish for the remainder of the first half.
The Lady Tigers were able to keep the game tight, and R. Hodges cut the Tulane lead, 32-31, with a pair of free-throws to end the half. The teams combined for seven lead changes in the first half, and both teams committed a total of juts seven turnovers in the first half.
The key to the early Tulane success was the play of the Green Wave front-court who outscored the Tigers 18-to-4 in the paint.
“I thought that for about the first three or four minutes of the second half, we were just more aggressive than they were,” Gunter said. “We talked about trying to force them to defend.”
The second half was as hard fought as the first, but Tulane would not relinquish their lead. The Green Wave matched their largest lead of the game, 39-32, with a jumper by Kelly Scallon with 15:41 left.
The LSU defense tightened not allowing Burse to score until the 11:45 mark. With 10:26 left, Ferdinand went to the free-throw line hitting a pair of free-throws. On the ensuing Lady Tiger possession, Kisha James knocked down a three-pointer cutting the Tulane lead to one, 44-43, with 9:59 left.
LSU would go on to put together a 13-0 run giving the Lady Tigers the lead. It was the first lead change of the second half, and it would also be the last. The Green Wave managed to cut the LSU lead to as little as three on five different occasions, but LSU hit 7-of-8 from the free-throw line with less than a minute securing the LSU victory.
The Lady Tigers finished the game shooting 19-of-27 (.704) from the charity stripe. LSU now leads the all-time series with arch-rival Tulane 21-3 and have now captured their sixth straight post-final victory.
The Lady Tigers have not lost a game following final exams since an 84-68 loss to Georgia in December 1994.
The Lady Tigers return to action Tuesday night when LSU hosts the Mercer Lady Bears at 7 p.m. at the PMAC.