BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 15th-ranked Lady Tigers basketball team’s home court winning streak came to halt on Thursday night when Vanderbilt pull off a 61-55 upset in Southeastern Conference action in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU (20-5, 8-3 SEC) has won 13 straight at home, including the previous 12 of this season. Vanderbilt (17-7, 5-6 SEC) snapped a four-game losing skid and won for the just the second time on the road in conference play.
“It doesn’t matter if they has a four-game losing streak,” LSU acting head coach Pokey Chatman said. “This is the SEC and that is a great program with great players. We knew they were going to be ready to play. You can hold someone to 61 points, but if you can only score 55, that is a matter of being ready to play and executing.”
Neither team shot the ball extremely well, both shooting an identical 23-58 from the floor for 39.7 percent, but the Commodores won the battle of the boards 41-32 and converted 13 offensive rebounds into 14 second-chance points.
“We never quite got over the hump tonight,” Chatman said. “We did not come close to carrying out anything we do in terms of offensively and defensively.”
Vanderbilt, led by freshman Carla Thomas with 22 points and 11 rebounds, took the lead for good with 14:43 left to play in the first half and built and nine point lead at the break, leading 33-24.
LSU was able to chip away and cut the lead to 38-32 four minutes into the second half, but Vanderbilt used a 12-6 run to take a 12-point lead with 9:34 left, the largest lead of the game. The Lady Tigers rallied to cut the lead to three with 3:06 left, but were not able to get any closer.
Seimone Augustus led LSU with 18 points and five rebounds, while Temeka Johnson added 14 points, five rebounds and four assists, and Wendlyn Jones chipped in with 10 points and a team-high seven rebounds.
Abi Ramsey added 17 points to the victory for Vanderbilt.
LSU will continue its home stand by hosting Mississippi State on Sunday at 2 p.m. CST in the Maravich Center.