BATON ROUGE — The 11th-ranked LSU women’s basketball team will honor five graduating seniors on Sunday at 2 p.m. when it faces No. 2 Tennessee at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The game will be the final regular-season home game for seniors April Brown, Angelia Crockett, Marie Ferdinand, Stacey Newton and Allison Weiner. They will be honored prior to the game.
“This is a special group of players that have been with us over the past four years,” said LSU coach Sue Gunter. “They have meant so much to this program, it would be great to send them out with a victory.”
The LSU-Tennessee game will be televised by College Sports Southeast by tape delay, and it will be aired on Monday at 12 p.m and Tuesday at 10:30 p.m.
The game can also be heard in Baton Rouge on WTGE 107.3-FM and on the Internet at www.LSUsports.net.
Tennessee leads the overall series with LSU, 27-5, and the Lady Vols hold a 9-3 advantage in games played in Baton Rouge. Tennessee has won three straight in the series as it dominated LSU in the teams’ two meetings last season, and pulled away late for an 89-70 victory this year.
However, the Lady Tigers have taken two of the last three meetings in Baton Rouge in the series, including a 72-69 win over No. 1 Tennessee in 1999. That win also came on senior day.
The game matches two teams who played deep into last season’s NCAA Tournament. LSU reached the Elite Eight before falling to Connecticut, and Tennessee lost to UConn in the national championship game.
“Tennessee is awfully good, and we expect them to play well,” Gunter said. “I’d like for us and play well; we didn’t play well here against them last year. I think it’s one thing to lose a game, but when you go out and don’t perform, it was a little bit of an embarrassing situation last year. Tennessee is playing better than they were last year, but I think we’re better as well.”
LSU is expected to start 5-9 senior Marie Ferdinand (20.7 ppg, 3.4 apg) and 5-11 senior Angelia Crockett (3.0 ppg, 3.6 apg) at the guards, 5-11 senior April Brown (11.5 ppg, 4.6 rpg) and 6-1 sophomore Ke-Ke Tardy (9.3 ppg, 5.0 rpg) at the forwards, and 5-11 junior DeTrina White (8.8 ppg, 6.8 rpg) at center.
Tennessee will counter with 6-2 sophomore Gwen Jackson (12.3 ppg, 7.0 rpg) at forward, 5-9 sophomore Kara Lawson (11.3 ppg, 3.2 apg), 5-10 senior Semeka Randall (9.9 ppg, 4.8 rpg) and 5-11 senior Kristen Clement (4.3 ppg, 3.3 apg) at the guards, and 6-5 junior Michelle Snow (11.2 ppg, 6.8 rpg) at center.
The Tennessee game represents the lone home game for LSU in a tough five-game stretch to end the season. The Lady Tigers have been on the road at Arkansas and No. 19 Vanderbilt for its last two games and will be at No. 9 Florida and South Carolina to close out the regular season.
“I don’t want to make too much of this (Tennessee) game,” Gunter said. “I don’t want to over-emphasize it or de-emphasize it. We have 14 conference games, and this is just one of them. Regardless of the outcome, the game won’t impact us any differently than the other 13 games. We need to look at that and not get carried away one way or the other with it.”