BATON ROUGE — LSU’s third-ranked women’s basketball team used another solid defensive performance, 20 points from Seimone Augustus and Florence Williams‘ first career double double on their way to a, 79-43, victory over Alabama on Thursday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Lady Tigers (15-1, 4-0 SEC) held its eighth straight opponent to 52 points or less, while Alabama (8-9, 2-2 SEC) shot 34.8 percent from the floor and committed 31 turnovers.
“Our ability to get out on the defensive end of the floor and apply a lot of pressure to Alabama did not allow them get into a rhythm,” LSU head coach Pokey Chatman said. “Once we got our feet wet defensively, we were able to settle in and execute offensively.”
The victory marked LSU’s 18th straight Southeastern Conference win and the 25th straight victory in the Maravich Center, the fourth longest active streak in the nation.
Augustus led the way with her 20 points on 9-16 shooting, while Quianna Chaney added 18 points off the bench and Williams equaled a career-best with 16 points and grabbed a career-high 12 rebounds in 23 minutes.
Erica White, marking her first career start for injured RaShonta LeBlanc, added 10 points, six assists and four steals in the victory.
Marverly Nettles led Alabama with 19 points and seven rebounds.
LSU led the entire way and jumped out to an early 16-5 lead after a 10-0 run. The Lady Tigers led 35-18 at the break.
LSU then scored the first five points of the second half and outscored the Crimson Tide, 29-6 over the first 11 minutes of the half to take a 40-point lead.
The Lady Tigers won the rebound battle, grabbing 35 to Alabama’s 30. LSU shot 49.2 percent from the floor for the game, collected 18 steals and converted the Crimson Tide’s turnovers into 34 points.
LSU will travel to Athens, Ga., to face Georgia on Sunday at 2 p.m. CST. The game will be broadcast live on Fox Sports Net.
Alabama vs LSU
01/19/06 7 p.m. at Baton Rouge, La. (Maravich Center)
At Baton Rouge, La. (Maravich Center)
LSU 79, ALABAMA 43
ALABAMA (8-9, 2-2 SEC)
NETTLES, Marverly 8-12 1-1 19; MERRIWEATHER, Dee 4-7 1-4 9; MOORE, Navonda 2-10 2-2 6; MASTIN, Kate 1-5 2-3 4; BARNES, Harriet 0-3 2-2 2; HILL, Lauren 1-4 0-0 2; DRURY, Leah 0-0 1-2 1; BLANDS, Camilla 0-4 0-0 0; JOHNSON, Krystle 0-1 0-0 0; JOHNSON, Chanel 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 16-46 9-14 43.
LSU (15-1, 4-0 SEC)
AUGUSTUS, Seimone 9-16 2-3 20; CHANEY, Quianna 8-15 0-0 18; WILLIAMS, Florence 6-8 4-4 16; WHITE, Erica 3-5 4-4 10; HOSTON, Scholanda 3-7 0-0 8; FOWLES, Sylvia 2-3 0-0 4; THOMAS, Ashley 0-2 2-2 2; MORRIS, Kristen 0-4 1-2 1; WHITFIELD, Marian 0-2 0-3 0; MITCHELL, Khalilah 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 31-63 13-18 79.
Alabama………………….. 18 25 – 43
LSU……………………… 35 44 – 79
3-point goals-Alabama 2-8 (NETTLES, Marverly 2-3; MOORE, Navonda 0-1; MASTIN, Kate 0-4), LSU 4-11 (CHANEY, Quianna 2-6; HOSTON, Scholanda 2-5). Fouled out–Alabama-None, LSU-None. Rebounds-Alabama 30 (NETTLES, Marverly 7), LSU 35 (WILLIAMS, Florence 12). Assists-Alabama 9 (MASTIN, Kate 4), LSU 20 (WHITE, Erica 6). Total fouls-Alabama 17, LSU 18. A-4289
GAME NOTES
LSU extended its Southeastern Conference winning streak to 18 straight games.
The Lady Tigers also extended the home-court winning streak to 25 straight.
Seimone Augustus reached double figures in scoring for the 79th straight game and, with her 20 points, collected her 57th 20-plus point game of her career.
Florence Williams posted the first double double of her career with a career-high tying 16 points and a career-best 12 rebounds.
LSU HEAD COACH POKEY CHATMAN
Opening Statement…
“A lot of positive things happened tonight. I think the most important thing was that we started the game with a lot of energy and it enabled us to get some early looks. Then we got into a full-court pressure defense and we also applied that defense in the half court. When you’re playing aggressively defensively, it galvanizes you to transition down and execute on the offensive end of the floor. As course we weren’t as sharp as we wanted to be in certain areas, but overall we had different combinations of people coming in who did a fairly decent job of executing.”
On Erica White stepping up tonight…
“At the half she had five assists and zero turnovers. I thought at one point she was trying to be too cautious on offense. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But I thought Erica did a good job of running the team in the absence of RaShonta. But what helps that is the fact that you have a collection of players on the floor that are trying to run the offense and they are mentally executing the game plan. Kudos to Erica for stepping in, and it’s exactly what we needed coming up with our next opponent in Georgia.”
On having other players step up with other players in foul trouble…
“We talk to the kids all the time about this being a team thing. The opposition is going to try to attack Seimone (Augustus) and Sylvia (Fowles), but the reason we’ve been able to be successful is because we have so many people that are capable of helping the team out in other areas that don’t necessarily appear on the stat sheet. But in order for us to achieve success against the rest of our schedule, we’re going to need an entire team effort. I thought we got a good peek into that tonight.”
LSU G Erica White
On her first career start…
“When RaShonta (LeBlanc) got hurt in practice our trainer told me she wasn’t sure but it was kind of looking so-so and to have my head ready for the game. I thought that I played okay. There were a lot of times where I could have done a better job at getting the team into some things but other than that I thought I did okay.”
LSU G Seimone Augustus
On how G Erica White played tonight…
“She played better than that, she is being a little easy on herself. She was doing what she was supposed to do as far as getting us out and in transition she got the ball up the court fast and into our offense quickly and she made great decisions with the ball. She had a a couple turnovers but we expected error and she cleaned them up and figured out what she needs to do.”
On their defensive game plan…
“We just wanted to try a couple different defenses. We hadn’t been able to use our press defense, our trap defense so we wanted to get out and experiment with some of those things going into the next couple games that we have against Georgia and Vanderbilt and all the other teams.”
On how they played defensively…
“It was tenacious. We got after it, the overall thing was that we had energy, which is something that we did not have in Connecticut. We just came out and we had a lot of deflections tonight that lead to a lot of steals that lead to a lot of transition opportunities for us so our defense initiated a lot of our offense.”
ALABAMA HEAD COACH STEPHANY SMITH
Opening statement…
“Obviously LSU is a phenomenal basketball team. I have to give them a lot of credit. Even when they pressured and overplayed and left something open, we couldn’t take advantage of it because they would cover so quickly because of their athleticism.”