BATON ROUGE — Two seniors, Amisha Carter of Louisiana Tech and LSU’s Jaime Lloreda grabbed the first week honors of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association state men’s and women’s college basketball players of the week announced by the LSWA on Tuesday.
The honor, based on nominations from the schools and a vote of an LSWA panel, is based for this week only on all games played by the teams through Dec. 7.
Lloreda’s debut against McNeese State proved to be a dynamic one for the Tigers as the senior from Colon, Panama scored 30 points and pulled down 21 rebounds, the first 30-20 performance at LSU since Shaquille O’Neal had 30 and 20 against Auburn in February 1992. The 6-9 forward followed that up with a 23-point game against Troy State and concluded his play to date by scoring 26 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in just 23 minutes against Louisiana Monroe.
For the three games, Lloreda made 29-of-38 field goal attempts (73.7 percent) and 23-of-36 free throws (63.9 percent), including 15-of-his-last-19 at the stripe for the 4-0 Tigers.
Carter, 6-2, from Oakland, Calif., averaged 16.8 points and 9.8 rebounds per game while helping lead the 10th-ranked Lady Techsters to a 3-1 mark to open the season. Carter recorded a pair of double-doubles, scoring 13 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in a road win at Illinois and registering 15 points with 14 rebounds in a win over Tulane. Carter also led Tech with 17 points in a loss to third-ranked Tennessee and had a career high 22 points in the season opening win versus Stephen F. Austin.
Carter shot 54 percent from the field (27-of-50) in the four games and pulled down 39 rebounds, 15 offensive.