BATON ROUGE — On the night where guards Temeka Johnson and Seimone Augustus were honored for the contributions to the gold-medal winning USA Women’s Basketball Team, the duo combined for 34 points, 14 assists, and 11 rebounds to pace the No. 16 Lady Tigers past Temple, 68-52.
LSU (9-2) has now won eight straight games since their 37-point loss to Penn State on November 21. During the win streak, the Lady Tigers have defeated their opponents by an average of more than 27 points.
The Lady Tigers also received another excellent performance from guard Doneeka Hodges, who added 17 points before leaving with a possible ankle sprain. Her outlook is probable for the Lady Tigers next game on the 27th. Augustus finished with 19 to lead LSU and Johnson added her second double-double in a week with 15 points and a game-high 12 assists.
LSU and Temple (3-4) played close for most of the first half before the Lady Tigers pulled away late in the opening 20 minutes after finishing the half on a 7-0 run thanks in part to a Johnson banked buzzer beating half court shot to give LSU a 38-27 lead at the break.
“We did a nice job toward the end of the first half,” LSU head coach Sue Gunter said. “But sometimes we would hit some dry spells and we were not very consistent at times. We were not as consistent as I would have liked for us to have been offensively.”
The Lady Tigers then built as much as a 22-point lead in the second half and Temple was not able to get any closer than 15 in the final 20 minutes of the game.
Temple was led in scoring by center Candice Dupree. She was the only Lady Owl in double-figures with 19 points. She also added a team-high 7 rebounds. Temple also got seven points each from Stephanie Douglas, Tynecia Pam, and Ari Moore.
Temple outrebounded LSU 36-35, but the Lady Tigers hit 45.2 percent of their shots from the floor and committed just 10 turnovers. The Owls hit 36.5 percents from the floor and committed 18 turnovers.
The Lady Tigers will return to action after the holiday break for a December 27 game in the Russell Athletic Shootout, a match-up of ACC and SEC teams as part of the Peach Bowl football events. There they will play Florida State in Atlanta’s Philips Arena. Game time is set for 11:30 a.m.