BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s basketball team will enter the 2001-02 with the No. 21 ranking, just one spot behind where they finished a year ago, as the first ESPN/USA Today preseason rankings were released Monday evening.
“The bottom line is it’s still where you finish at the end of the season, not where you start, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be ranked,” said LSU head coach Sue Gunter. “You always want that recognition. Now it’s up to us to go back it up.”
The Lady Tigers were one of five SEC schools to make the preseason edition of the top 25. Tennessee earned the No. 2 spot, followed by Vanderbilt at No. 3, Florida at No. 12 and 15th-ranked Georgia.
Tennessee received seven first place votes, while Vanderbilt picked up five. UConn took the top spot in the first poll with an overwhelming 25 first place votes. Duke and Oklahoma round out the preseason top five at fourth and fifth respectively.
Louisiana Tech grabbed the sixth spot, followed by Texas Tech, Iowa State, Purdue and Stanford to round out the top 10.
In addition to LSU’s SEC opponents, Purdue is one of three ranked non-conference opponents the Lady Tigers will face this season. Purdue comes to the Maravich Assembly Center on Dec. 2 in a rematch of last year’s NCAA Tournament second round game won by the Lady Boilermakers.
The Lady Tigers also host 20th ranked Michigan on Dec. 16, while playing 14th-ranked Colorado on neutral ground in Lubbock, Texas on Dec. 29.
“I think the rankings indicate the quality of our schedule this season,” added Gunter. “We have a great schedule ahead of us and we hope that LSU fans will recognize the quality of our opponents and come out and support us.”
LSU opens its 2001-02 exhibition season on Wednesday when the Jackson All-Stars come to the Maravich Assembly Center for a 7 p.m. tip. LSU opens the regular season on Nov. 20 at home against Grambling.