WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The LSU women’s basketball team completed a 1 1/2 hour practice in Purdue’s Mackey Arena (14,123) on Thursday afternoon after arriving at the site of the regional’s first-round game of the 2001 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament against Arizona State in West Lafayette, Ind.
Head coach Sue Gunter‘s Lady Tigers (19-10, 8-6 SEC) enter their sixth-consecutive postseason tournament coming off a 70-58 loss to eventual runner-up Vanderbilt in the second round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament in Memphis, Tenn., on March 2.
The No. 6 seed Lady Tigers face what may be the best No. 11 seed in the history of the women’s 64-team draw, the Arizona State Sun Devils. The Sun Devils (20-10, 12-6 Pac 10) enter the tournament ranked 25th in both the AP and the ESPN/USA TODAY Coaches’ Poll, and are coming off their first Pac 10 conference title in school history.
“There are a lot of interesting matchups in this game,” Gunter said. “It’s going to be a heck of a matchup. These are two good teams that like to play up-tempo and like to run, so that should make for an exciting game.”
The Sun Devils will be making their fourth trip to the “Big Dance” and their first tournament appearance since 1992, the last time before February the 2000-01 season that the team was ranked in the Top 25. Arizona State is 2-3 in NCAA postseason play.
“There are a lot of similarities between these two teams,” Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne said at Thursday’s press conference. “Both play team basketball and both are very good defensive teams. There are some strong similarities in that both have standout players and each has played a tough schedule. It’s a tremendous first-round matchup — it would have been better if it was further along in the tournament.”
However, the first-round matchup pits a 17th-ranked LSU squad, which has been ranked in every poll since February of 1999 and has combined for 37 games of NCAA tournament experience, against a Sun Devil team that was picked to finish as low as sixth in the Pac 10 and has only one player — leading scorer and Old Dominion transfer Amanda Levans (15.3 ppg, 42.1 three-point percentage)– with NCAA Tournament experience.
“It has to be an advantage for us,” Gunter said. “We’ve been there the past few years so there won’t be any surprises for us. But, they’re here for the first time in a while and there’s a certain excitement about playing (in the NCAA Tournament for the first time). They have nothing to lose. They’ll play with a lot of abandonment and a lot of enthusiasm and we’ll have to match that.”
Levans, a junior who went to two Sweet 16’s with the Monarchs in ’98 and ’99, set the school record with 59 three-pointers in and led the team in the 2000-01 season. She was named First-Team All-Pac 10 after the 2000-01 regular season.
“There have been a lot of firsts for this program this season,” Levans said. “We like to take advantage of these and not be bothered by them.”
Arizona State’s four leading scorers are all newcomers, including Levans, Colorado transfers Melody Johnson (14.5 ppg.) and Betsy Boardman (11.7 ppg.), and Cian Carvalho, a junior college transfer from Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College.
LSU is led by All-American Marie Ferdinand, who led the Lady Tigers in scoring with 20.7 ppg. and also added better than five rebounds and nearly four assists and three steals. Fellow senior April Brown added 11.6 ppg while forward DeTrina White battled back injuries throughout the 2000-01 season to contribute 9.3 points and 7.0 rebounds per game. Ke-Ke Tardy averaged 9.1 ppg and freshmand twins Roneeka and Doneeka Hodges added 8.8 and 7.2 ppg, respectively.
Each of the teams were surprised with their first round seeding by the NCAA Selection Committee, while led to the only matchup in either the men’s or women’s tournament between ranked teams.
“Truth be told, I’m not excited about our seed,” Turner Thorne said. “It should have been higher. But, we’ll use it to our advantage and take it as a challenge.”
The Lady Tigers expected a No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the tournament and were thought to have an outside shot at playing host to a the regional’s first and second round.
Notes:
- The audio broadcast of the game will be aired live on LSUsports.net beginning with the pre-game show at 4:30 p.m. CT on Friday night.
- ESPN2 (Baton Rouge Cable Channel 57) also will carry the game live.
- Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne gave birth to her second child, Liam, at 5:29 p.m. CT on Selection Sunday.