BATON ROUGE — The LSU Lady Tiger basketball team will officially get the 2001-02 season started on Tuesday as they host Grambling State in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center at 7 p.m. Admission is free for any fan that brings three canned goods to the game to help benefit the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.
The Lady Tigers defeated the Jackson All-Stars, 108-33, and the Australian Institute of Sport, 58-56, in their two exhibition games. Grambling (0-1) opened the season with a loss at Kansas, 77-58, on Friday night.
“We are excited to finally get to a game that counts,” said LSU head coach Sue Gunter. “Although we are still not 100-percent healthy and we are not executing like we would like to, we are ready for competition and Grambling is a very competitive team. They are also a good transition team and will apply pressure the entire game.”
In exhibition play, LSU was led by junior Kisha James, who averaged 18 points a contest. Against the Australian Institute of Sport, she nailed a 15-footer with under a second remaining in the game to give the Lady Tigers the two-point victory. She also led the team with six assists a game.
On the boards, the Lady Tigers were led by junior college transfer Aiysha Smith with 8.5 rebounds a game in exhibition play. The Kodak All-American from Tyler Junior College also averaged 11. 5 points a game, including 17 against the Jackson All-Stars.
Grambling had four players score in double-figures against Kansas, led by forward Shrieka Evans with 18, including a 4-of-10 performance from three-point range and eight rebounds. Evans led the Lady Tigers with 111 three-pointers last season, making more three-pointers individually than LSU made as a team.
“Grambling is a very up-tempo type team that averaged almost 80 points a game last season,” Gunter added. “It should be raining threes in the PMAC since they are not afraid to shoot the ball and they like to shoot from long range.”
Forward Chovanique Kibble was one rebound shy of a double-double for Grambling with 13 points and nine rebounds against Kansas. LaKandra Davis added 12 points and Scherwanda Boston had 11 points to round out the four players in double-figures. Those four accounted for 54 of the 58 points that Grambling scored.
In 26 seasons, the Lady Tigers are 21-5 record in season openers. Last season, LSU defeated New Mexico, 54-49, to kick off the highly successful 2000-01 campaign. The Lady Tigers won a school record eight-straight season openers from the start of the 1989-90 season to the start of the 1996-97 season.
The Lady Tigers from LSU have met the Lady Tigers of Grambling only once before, with LSU coming away with the 71-56 victory in 1986.
This weekend, LSU will host the www.womenscollegehoops.com Crawfish Classic in the PMAC. The action gets underway on Saturday as the Lady Tigers take on Tennessee-Martin at noon, followed by Virginia Tech-Northwestern State at 2 p.m. The losers of Saturday’s games will face off in the consolation game on Sunday at noon, followed by the tournament championship game at 2 p.m.