BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 15th-ranked Lady Tigers basketball team ended the game with a 12-2 run and had four players score in double figures en route to 82-72 Southeastern Conference victory over South Carolina in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Sunday afternoon.
Sophomores Seimone Augustus and Scholanda Hoston led LSU (17-3, 5-1 SEC) with 17 points each, while Wendlyn Jones had 14 and Hanna Biernacka added 10. Jones also had a game-high 10 rebounds for her second career double double.
South Carolina (9-10, 0-6 SEC) kept the score close for most of the game, trailing 36-30 at the break, and 50-47 with 10:25 remaining in the game, but LSU used a 7-0 run to take a 57-47 lead over the next minute and then finished the game on the run that resulted in the 20-point victory, the largest for the Lady Tigers in the SEC this season.
“The most gratifying things was that we finished the game off,” said LSU associate coach Pokey Chatman, filling in for head coach Sue Gunter, who missed the game to further recover from her bronchitis. “We really won it going away. Going back to the Arizona and the Auburn game, it was like we were just holding on to win. It was nice to see us step up and execute down the stretch.”
LSU had its’ best shooting half of the season, hitting 18 of 26 shots from the floor (69.2 percent) in the second half to finished the game at 57.9 percent for the game. The Lady Tigers also hit 14 of 16 from the free throw line.
The Gamecocks shot 43.1 percent from the floor, including 40.7 percent in the second half and were led by Olga Gritsaeva’s 16 points. South Carolina was also plagued by 22 turnovers.
The Lady Tigers outrebounded South Carolina 33-26 and were led by Jones’ 10, while Biernacka and Doneeka Hodges had six boards each. Hodges added seven points and four assists to her rebounding total.
LSU remains in second-place, one game behind Tennessee in the SEC standings, and will travel to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to face the Crimson Tide on Thursday at 7 p.m. CST in Coleman Coliseum.