BATON ROUGE — The 19th-ranked Lady Tiger basketball team hosts the University of Tennessee-Martin in the first game of the womenscollegehoops.com Crawfish Classic in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Saturday.
The tournament begins with 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 is the first ever meeting between LSU (1-0) at the Skyhawks of Tennessee-Martin (1-1). In their last outing, the Lady Tigers defeated Grambling, 101-58 in the season opener. UT Martin lost to Northern Iowa, 69-53, in its last game after defeating Lees-McRae, 87-55, in its season opener.
“Tennessee-Martin is a very good team that returns the nucleus of its team from last year,” said LSU head coach Sue Gunter. “They are well coached and have good size. We will have to play very well to get the job done.”
Against Grambling, LSU was paced by freshman Scholanda Dorrell with 22 points, the third highest scoring output by a freshman in her collegiate debut in LSU history. Junior Kisha James also added 20 points as the Lady Tigers had six players in double-figures. Junior Ke-Ke Tardy recorded her second collegiate double-double with 15 points and a career-high 15 rebounds.
Everyone attending the Crawfish Classic will get a chance to enter a drawing for two Tiger Den Suite luxury box tickets for the LSU football season finale against Auburn on Dec. 1. Registration for the Tiger Den tickets, compliments of womenscollegehoops.com, will take place during the LSU-Tennessee-Martin game and the Virginia Tech-Northwestern State games on Saturday and the consolation game on Sunday.
Two names will be drawn prior to the start of the championship game on Sunday and the winners will have a chance to shoot for the tickets at halftime. The shootout winner will receive two Tiger Den Suite tickets for the LSU-Auburn football game.
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.