BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 18th-ranked Lady Tigers basketball team, coming off a four-game road swing to begin the season, opens the home schedule on Tuesday against No. 22 Rutgers at 7 p.m. CST in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Lady Tigers (2-2) are coming off a 73-51 victory at Rice on Saturday. Sophomore Seimone Augustus led the way with 21 points while senior Temeka Johnson added 12 points and sophomore Treynell Clavelle poured in a career-high nine points and had a career best five boards off the bench.
Rutgers (3-2) is coming off a 69-64 loss at Clemson on Sunday afternoon and fell in the championship game of the Preseason WNIT at Texas Tech last week. The Scarlet Knights are led by guard Cappie Pondexter with 16.2 points and 3.4 assists per game.
There will be a reunion of sorts on the court as RU’s Pondexter played this summer with LSU’s Augustus and Johnson on the gold medal-winning United States World Championship for Young Women Team in Croatia.
Another storyline is the combined career records of the two head coaches in the game. LSU’s Sue Gunter enters the game 17 victories shy of 700 for her career, while Rutger’s C. Vivian Stringer holds a career mark of 677-229. Gunter sits third on the NCAA list of winningest women’s basketball coaches, while Stringer is fourth.
This will be the third meeting between the two schools. Rutgers won the previous two games, a 85-69 win in 1979 in Miami and a 82-72 win in 1994 in Tucson, Ariz.
Following Tuesday’s game, LSU will have 11 days off the final exams before hosting Louisiana-Monroe on Dec. 13 to begin a stretch of six home games in nine days in December.
PROBABLE STARTERS
RUTGERS (3-2)
G 25 Cappie Pondexter 5-9 Jr. 16.2 ppg, 3.4 apg
G 13 Nikki Jett 5-8 Jr. 8.3 ppg, 2.0 rpg
F 34 Michelle Campbell 6-2 So. 8.8 ppg, 5.0 rpg
F 35 Dawn McCullough 5-9 Sr. 12.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg
C 55 Rebecca Richman 6-4 Jr. 3.6 ppg, 5.4 rpg
LSU (2-2)
G 2 Temeka Johnson 5-3 Sr. 12.8 ppg, 4.3 apg
G 45 Doneeka Hodges 5-9 Sr. 10.0 ppg, 3.0 rpg
G 33 Seimone Augustus 6-1 So. 18.5 ppg, 4.8 rpg
F 32 Scholanda Hoston 6-1 So. 8.0 ppg, 3.8 rpg
F 52 Tillie Willis 6-3 Jr. 3.3 ppg, 2.8 rpg