BATON ROUGE — All 12 Lady Tigers scored, as the seventh-ranked LSU women’s basketball team shot 50 percent from the field built a double-digit halftime lead and held back Florida, 79-66, on Thursday night at the Maravich Center.
LSU (22-3, 8-2 SEC) took over second place in the Southeastern Conference.
Florida (6-19, 0-10 SEC) avoided the blowout by hitting a season-best 10 three-point baskets on 24 attempts.
“Florida played like we expected them to play,” LSU head coach Pokey Chatman said. “You know that they are a good basketball team and they are playing really well together. You can throw the record out and you expect they are going to play well and play hard.”
LSU center Sylvia Fowles, honored prior to tipoff for her 1,000th career rebound, notched her 18th double double of the season with 11 points and rebounds. The school record holder for blocked shots added four to her career total (216).
Guard Quianna Chaney led the Lady Tigers in the scoring column with an identical shooting performance as Fowles, 5-of-11. RaShonta LeBlanc led an outstanding assist performance by LSU, dishing seven while scoring 11 of her own. Starting point guard Erica White had six assists and six steals while scoring nine points on 4-of-5 shooting.
“We ran good offense,” Chatman added. “We shared the basketball to the tune of shooting 50 percent from the field and that is something that we struggled with so it was nice to see a lot of people got a lot of touches and knocked some baskets down.”
Twenty-one of LSU’s 30 made baskets were assisted. LSU committed only 11 turnovers, while scoring 23 points off 20 Lady Gators turnovers.
Florida, which dressed only nine players, managed only 38-percent shooting but made up for it with 10 of 21 field goals from three-point range.
Guard Depree Bowden paced the Lady Gators with 20 points and nine rebounds, while forward Marshae Dotson added 16 points and 10 rebounds. Forward Briana Phillips provided a spark off the bench with 13 points before fouling out.
Each of the three had three three-pointers.
Florida starting guard Sha Brooks added 14 points.
Florida stayed close with the Lady Tigers early on, even leading briefly, 10-9, in the first four minutes. The Lady Gators trailed by only two, 19-17, with only 7:23 left in the first half.
However, LSU responded with seven-straight points to push its lead to 26-17 inside five minutes to play in the half.
After Florida closed the gap to five, LSU again used an 11-4 run to build a 12-point advantage.
Though Florida scored the final four points of the half, the Lady Tigers led 37-29 at the half.
LSU rushed out in the first eight minutes of the second half with a 10-0 run to lead 53-36.
Three three-pointers by Bowden allowed Florida to creep within single digits, 60-51, with 6:03 to play, however, LSU quickly scored seven-straight points to put the game out of reach.
The Lady Tigers made 10-of-12 free throws in the final 1:36 to ice the game.
LSU returns to action on Sunday at 2 p.m. CT when the fifth-ranked Connecticut Huskies come to the Maravich Center for the first time.
GAME NOTES
– Sylvia Fowles moved into 13th-place on LSU’s career scoring list with her first two points of the second half. She passed LeNette Caldwell’s 1,412 points. Fowles finished the game with 11 points for 1,414 In her career.
– Fowles scored in double figures for the 18th straight game with her 11 tonight.
– Fowles recorded her 12th straight double double with 11 points and 11 rebounds. She has 18 double doubles this season and 53 in her career.
– LSU extended its nation’s leading home court win streak to 43 straight games, including 21 straight Southeastern Conference home wins.
LSU HEAD COACH POKEY CHATMAN
Opening Statement…
“Florida played like we expected them to play. So many people were asking me how you get your team up for Florida that hasn’t won a conference game. I said we showed them tape and then they understood what Florida was going to bring to the table in terms of their players in different positions. The fact that they were at Vanderbilt up at half, the fact that they were down twenty plus points at Kentucky and cut it to five in less than two minutes and cut Ole Miss to four with thirty something seconds left. You know that they are a good basketball team and they are really close and they are playing really well together. You can throw the record out and you expect they are going to play well and play hard. You don’t have to get your team up for that, but we ran good offense, we shared the basketball to the tune of shooting 50 percent from the field and that is something that we struggled with so it was nice to see a lot of people got a lot of touches and knocked some baskets down.”
On being disappointed with the number of rebounds…
“You always evaluate the stats sheet with a close eye as a coach, and especially because it was one of our main goals to try to be a little bit more dominant on the boards so I am extremely disappointed with that. We really emphasized our transition offense this week in practice. We looked at our transition in terms of Georgia and how we had one point in transition against Georgia, and that was when Quianna Chaney got fouled and went 1-for-2 at the line. We really didn’t have that many opportunities at South Carolina so we really broke it down and made that a point of emphasis at practice so it is nice to see that translated into 16 transition points here against Florida. It is nice to see some carry over, it was nice to see some offense run with several people getting shots but also knocking them down.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On the play of the team tonight …
“Even though things didn’t seem so well on offense, we got into our defense and we know that that’s where everything starts for us, on the defensive end. So we just got at them (Florida) tonight.”
On her success stealing the ball …
“I always try to come out and put a lot of pressure on the other team’s point guard, and usually I get a lot of deflections. But tonight the ball just happened to hit my hand just right and they turned up steals instead of deflections. And I credit that to my teammates for putting pressure on the person who was passing it so that I could get into the passing lane and steal it.”
FLORIDA HEAD COACH CAROLYN PECK QUOTES
Opening statement…
“LSU is ranked No. 7 in the country for a reason. Maybe they should be ranked higher. They are a very good ball club and we knew we were going to have our hands full, especially with Sylvia Fowles. I thought our team did a pretty decent job defending Fowles, considering she only had 11 points in 31 minutes. Another player we were concentrating on was Quianna Chaney. We held her to only one three pointer and she is a great three-point shooter. (Allison) Hightower and really their entire supporting cast stepped up big tonight. We knew it was going to take two people to defend Fowles and that leaves somebody open. But the thing that hurt us the most was points off turnovers. We didn’t give ourselves a chance to get back and play defense by turning the ball over 20 times.”
On why the team has been struggling…
“We have been struggling as of late, but we have battled in every game. That is the thing about our players is that they don’t quit. This is a tough place to play. When their crowd gets behind them they can get pretty loud. Our team stayed focused and put themselves in good position, but we just couldn’t find a way to get over the hump and close it out.”