BATON ROUGE — Sylvia Fowles posted career-highs with 26 points and 22 rebounds to lead the fourth-ranked LSU women’s basketball team to a 75-53 victory over No. 22 Vanderbilt on Thursday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Fowles’ night marked the first time since 1994 an LSU (17-1, 6-0 SEC) player recorded at least 20 points and 20 rebounds. Cornelia Gayden scored 24 points and grabbed 21 rebounds against Mississippi State on Jan. 5, 1994.
“Sylvia is a special individual, and notice I said individual and not player, because you can challenge Sylvia in a way that can lead to a performance like that,” LSU head coach Pokey Chatman said.
Seimone Augustus poured in a game-high 28 points in the victory, LSU’s 26th straight at home and the 20th consecutive in the Southeastern Conference.
The Lady Tigers jumped out to an early 18-7 lead in the first eight minutes of the game, but Vanderbilt (13-7, 2-4 SEC) closed out the half on a 20-10 run to cut the lead down to one at the break.
The Commodores, who have now dropped three straight games, tied the score at 34-34 with 16:20 left in the game, but LSU scored the next 10 points in 1:19 seconds to pull away. A 14-0 run after a Vanderbilt three-pointer put LSU up, 58-37, and the Commodores never got closer that 19 the rest of the way.
“After the half we had a sense of urgency at both ends of the floor,” Chatman said. “We mentally locked in to our defense and took Vanderbilt out of their comfort zone.”
Fowles, who played just 29 minutes, scored 20 of her 26 in the second half on 8-10 shooting. Augustus finished the night hitting 11-14 shots from the floor and LSU as a team shot 45.5 percent, including 56.3 in the second half.
Vanderbilt was held to just 35.6 percent shooting and committed 16 turnovers.
Erica White, making her second start, dished out a career-high 14 assists to go with seven points and three steals. Fowles added five blocked shots to her career night.
Augustus had eight of LSU’s 45 rebounds.
Rachel Brockman led Vanderbilt with 14 points, while Liz Sherman, the Commodores leading scoring entering the game had two points.
LSU will host No. 9 Baylor on Monday at 6 p.m. CST in the Maravich Center. The non-conference contest in a rematch of last year’s NCAA National Semifinal game in Indianapolis.
GAME NOTES
LSU extended its Southeastern Conference winning streak to 20 straight games.
LSU has now won 26 straight games in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Seimone Augustus recorded her 80th straight double figure scoring game and it was the 59th time she scored at least 20 points.
Sylvia Fowles became the fourth LSU player in history to have at least 20 points and 20 rebounds in a game and the feat marked the 16th time in the history of the program. The last player to accomplish the feat was Cornelia Gayden (24 points/21 rebounds) against Miss. State on Jan. 5, 1994.
Fowles posted career-highs with 26 points, 22 rebounds and five blocked shots.
Pokey Chatman won her 50th game tonight in just her 55th game.
LSU HEAD COACH POKEY CHATMAN
Opening Statement…
“There were so many things that happened, and a lot of them happened after our chat at halftime. I thought to start the game, even though we had some hollow possessions and didn’t score, that we executed well. But after the half, we had a sense of urgency at both ends of the floor. We mentally locked in to our defense and took Vanderbilt out of their comfort zone. That’s what we always tell them. Mental is to physical as four is to one.”
On Sylvia Fowles‘ 20-plus point and rebound performance…
“Sylvia is special individual, and notice I said individual and not player, because you can challenge Sylvia in a way that can lead to a performance like that. It’s never really about Sylvia. It’s about seeing what the opponents are doing and helping her team. She realized the last few times out she hadn’t played to her capability, and that has been on her shoulders so she made a conscious effort when she came out of the locker room to establish herself and use some of her speed and quickness. I thought she was a little lethargic and got beat on some post flashes, but she came out on the very first offensive possession, called and entry and got a screen and was exploding to the basketball, and you knew her mindset was different.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On what Coach Pokey said at halftime…
“I think she got on Sylvia (Fowles) a little bit. She wanted her to be more aggressive on the offensive end and it worked because she came back out and played like the most dominant player in the country.”
On their improvement in the second half…
“We came out in transition. Our defense stepped up. We got in the passing lanes and caused some deflections. We caused some problems for them as far as getting hands up in their shots. Early on, they had a lot of uncontested shots and in the second half we did a lot of flying around and getting hands on the ball.”
On Erica White…
“Erica (White) always gives us a spark not just in the game but in practice. That’s the kind of player we need. We need energy and she is an energy player and she gives that energy to us every game.”
On her performance tonight…
“Coach (Chatman) said in the locker room at halftime that I didn’t have any fouls. To me that meant I wasn’t playing aggressive so I had to go out there and bang.”VANDERBILT HEAD COACH MELANIE BALCOMB
On LSU’s run to start the second half …
“The big thing was that we broke down defensively. Checking out was a huge problem. On offense, we didn’t execute. They had some steals, stripped us a couple of times. We didn’t get open for people so they got easy transition buckets off steals.”
On here speech to the team at halftime …
“We were in the game. I liked our effort but you are obviously trying to shut down two people. We really talked more about our gameplan and what we were supposed to be executing better — not giving (Seimone) Augustus her shot from her favorite spot in stride, doing better on screens because she reads screens so well and keeping (Sylvia) Fowles off the boards. She ended up with 22 boards and had 13 boards at halftime. Half of them are her own shots that we aren’t checking out. In the second half, it got worse. We didn’t check her out and gave her three-point play after three-point play.”