BATON ROUGE — For the first time in school history, the LSU athletic department announced that it has landed a national title sponsor for a women’s athletic event. One of the top national women’s college basketball websites, www.womenscollegehoops.com, will sponsor the Lady Tiger Crawfish Classic tournament in November.
“We are delighted about our partnership with womenscollegehoops.com and love the association with an organization that is so dedicated to supporting women’s basketball,” said Lady Tiger head coach Sue Gunter. “There are not many schools in the nation that can say they have a national title sponsor for one of their tournaments. It speaks well for our program and really makes a statement about where we are that this type of national sponsor would want to associate its name with our program and our tournament.”
Womenscollegehoops.com is an independent website based out of Farmington, Conn., dedicated to promoting and furthering women’s collegiate basketball. It will sponsor two major women’s basketball tournaments this season, the Crawfish Classic at LSU and the Stanford Invitational at Stanford University.
The Crawfish Classic is based on a four-team, four-game format featuring LSU, Virginia Tech, Northwestern State and Tennessee-Martin. Both LSU and Virginia Tech advanced to the NCAA Tournament last season and all but Tennessee-Martin posted 20-win seasons in 2000-01.
Games will begin on Saturday, Nov. 24 as LSU faces Tennessee-Martin at noon, followed by Virginia Tech against Northwestern State at 2 p.m.
The tournament will conclude on Sunday with the losers of the Saturday games advancing to the consolation game at noon and the winners advancing to the tournament championship game at 2 p.m.
This will be the sixth time that LSU has hosted the Crawfish Classic, which was first held during the 1985-86 season. The Lady Tigers are a perfect 10-0 all-time in the tournament, last held during the 1995-96 season. Virginia Tech and Tennessee-Martin are first-time participants, while this will be the second time that Northwestern State has participated, going 1-1 and finishing third in 1986-87.