BATON ROUGE — LSU’s top-ranked Lady Tigers basketball team made history on Sunday afternoon in the Maravich Center.
LSU’s (27-1, 14-0 SEC) 76-52 victory over Florida (14-13, 5-9 SEC) gave the program its first Southeastern Conference regular season title and they did it with a perfect 14-0 conference record.
“Although it wasn’t pretty, I am proud of this team for getting together this afternoon and playing well enough to win our first conference championship,” LSU head coach Pokey Chatman said.
The Lady Tigers are the 13th team in SEC history to complete the conference schedule unblemished, but just the second school to accomplish the feat since the league went to a 14-game schedule in 1998.
It was a junior and a freshman that sparked the Lady Tigers to victory on senior day. Seimone Augustus had a game-high 19 points, while Quianna Chaney added a career-high 16, 12 of which came from four three-pointers.
But, it was senior point guard Temeka Johnson that led LSU in the game. Johnson, playing in her final home game of her career, dished out a single-game school record-tying 15 assists and collected a season-high six steals to go with eight points.
“The thing about Temeka is it’s easy to judge her importance on the stat sheet. That’s the obvious,” Chatman said about her point guard. “More importantly she is the glue of this team when the staff is not around, in the summer time, in the weight room, pre-practice and post-practice. She’s been tremendous in her effort and her leadership.”
In addition to Johnson, Crystal White, Tillie Willis and Florence Williams each played in their final home game as a Lady Tiger.
LSU led 39-26 at the break after a 7-0 run to end the half and opened the second half on a 12-0 run to pull away and take a 51-26 lead, the largest of the game.
Florida would get as close as 52-37 with less than 10 minutes to play before LSU regained a 20 points lead with 5:56 left to play and led by at least 20 points for the remainder of the game.
Tashia Morehead led the Gators with 17 points, while Dalila Eshe had seven of Florida’s 31 rebounds. UF outrebounded LSU by one.
The Lady Tigers shot 53.7 percent from the floor, including 55.6 percent in the first half. LSU’s defense held Florida to 32.7 percent shooting from the floor and forced 23 turnovers, while collecting 15 steals.
LSU, the No. 1 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament, earned a first-round bye and will open the tournament on Friday at noon CST against the winner of Thursday’s game between the No. 8 seed (yet to be determined) and No. 9 seed Alabama.
GAME NOTES
- LSU wins its first SEC regular season title and did it with a perfect 14-0 record, joining Tennessee (three times) as the only other program to complete a perfect season in the conference since the SEC went to a 14-game schedule in 1998.
- Temeka Johnson tied her own LSU single-game assist record with 15 in today’s game.
- Johnson moved into ninth-place on the NCAA career assist list.
- Johnson moved into 13th-place on LSU’s career scoring list.
- Seimone Augustus recorded her 54th straight double figure scoring game.
- Quianna Chaney scored a career-high 16 points.
- LSU will be the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament and play at Noon CST on Friday in the second round.