BATON ROUGE — Fourth-ranked Auburn erased a five-point halftime deficit with a 21-5 run midway through the second half to snap the LSU women’s basketball team’s two-game winning streak by a score of 66-55 on Sunday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Lady Tigers (11-8, 4-3 Southeastern Conference) dropped its second straight home game and lost to Auburn for the first time since 2004. LSU sits in sixth place in the SEC standings following Sunday’s slate of games.
Auburn (21-1, 6-1) returned to the win column following its first loss of the season on Thursday at Georgia. The Tigers (No. 4 ESPN/USA Today Coaches and No. 5 Associated Press) had dropped five in a row to LSU prior to Sunday’s meeting and remained in a three-way tie with Florida and Vanderbilt for first place in the league.
“I was really proud of our team today,” LSU head coach Van Chancellor. “We hung in there. We just could not make a free throw. Every time we got ready to make a play, we couldn’t make a free throw. Our kids really played extremely hard. “
Senior forward Kristen Morris came off the bench to lead LSU with seven rebounds and 14 points, one shy of a career high. Morris also blocked two shots and picked up a career-high four steals in 32 minutes of action.
Junior guard Allison Hightower chipped in 10 points for her seventh consecutive double-figure scoring game, and freshman forward Courtney Jones added nine points.
Auburn’s Alli Smalley led all scorers with 21 points, including a perfect 5-of-5 effort from 3-point land. Smalley had 15 of her 21 in the second half with four of her 3-pointers coming during the second half run that turned the game around.
“Give Auburn credit,” Chancellor said. “In the second half, they made some shots I have not seen them make. (Alli) Smalley made five three-balls, and I thought we were guarding her pretty well. It just shows you what experience can do for you under pressure in key games.”
Auburn’s DeWanna Bonner managed 18 points, but the difference in the game proved to be at the free throw line. LSU shot just 41 percent from the line on 9-of-22 attempts to Auburn’s 11-of-16.
With LSU holding a 28-23 lead to start the second half, Smalley buried three 3-pointers in the first three minutes to turn the deficit into a 32-30 lead with 17:22 remaining.
Morris’ layup at the 15:21 mark would be the last time the game would be tied as Auburn put on a shooting display over the next eight minutes to take a commanding double-digit advantage.
Bonner converted a layup and a jumper on back-to-back possessions to make it a 53-39 contest with 7:42 to play. LSU came within 11 points in the final three minutes but could not trim the deficit to under double digits.
Auburn shot a blistering 63 percent (17-of-27) in the second half and finished 49 percent for the game after a 33.3 percent effort in the first 20 minutes. LSU finished 36.7 percent for the contest on 22-of-60 shooting.
The Lady Tigers led by as many as seven points in the first half. Morris knocked down a layup and Jones fired up a jumper at the 2:35 mark to make it 28-21 in favor of LSU.
LSU returns to action at home against Arkansas on Thursday, Feb. 5. Fans are reminded that tip-off is scheduled for 8 p.m. CST. The contest will be televised live on the SEC Regional Network and carried by Fox Sports Net.
LSU HEAD COACH VAN CHANCELLOR
Opening statement…
“I was really proud of our team today. We hung in there. We just could not make a free throw. Every time we got ready to make a play, we couldn’t make a free throw. We shot 18-40. Our kids really played extremely hard. Give Auburn credit. In the second half, they made some shots I have not seen them make. (Alli) Smalley made five three-balls, and I thought we were guarding her pretty well. It just shows you what experience can do for you under pressure in key games. (Whitney) Boddie just runs the same little play over and over. (DeWanna)Bonner killed us. I thought (Whitney)Boddie, (DeWanna) Bonner and (Alli) Smalley were as good of a trio as we’ve guarded. I thought this team was really hard to defend. We tried to zone them, man them. I was really proud for Kristen Morris. She played really well today. I thought Courtney Jones played really well. I thought Jones and Morris gave us big time lifts. We play everybody close. We just can’t win a home game. We didn’t have but 12 turnovers. We were even on the board with Auburn. Auburn just shot better than us in the second half.”
On Auburn’s second half game…
“Sometimes young teams have a hard time understanding how important it is to defend teams on the first possessions of the game.”
On improving free throw shooting…
“I don’t know what I have to do to improve the free throws. It amazes me. We shot well today at shootaround. All of my teams in my career have been good free throw shooting teams. All my pro teams. All of my Ole Miss teams. I’m a little mystified. We come play at home, and I don’t think we can relax enough. We’re going on the road, and we don’t have our friends and family here so we’re relaxed. We’re able to play. We want to do so good so badly at home. We put too much pressure on ourselves.”
On what happened to LSU’s intensity in second half…
“We couldn’t make plays. You talk about defense winning games. You talk about everything in the world with winning games. If you don’t make free throws and little shots, you can’t get your momentum going. We went through periods today where we couldn’t score.”
LSU PLAYER QUOTES
On how Auburn is the No. 1 offense in the country….
“I think entering the second half Auburn shot the ball very well. We couldn’t make the shots they did from the outside. I think they have wing players that have great shots and it was hard transition for us because they looked at those players to shoot more than we are use to.”
On if LSU has found a solid rotation….
“I think we are getting better as a team all together. We struggled early in the season but we are finishing the game a lot stronger. I think coming into the second half we are still more focused. We just met some opponents at bad times. Probably if we played Auburn last Sunday we would have come out with a victory. We need to keep working and prepare for the rest of the teams.”
On how she has stepped up for her team…
“I’m just playing where my team needs me every game. I try to bring a lot of energy to the court and pick people up.”
On how Auburn out shot LSU in the second half….
“We came into the first half very calm and well prepared. They just took over in the second. Their shots just fell more than ours did. We did not capitalize on the shots that we needed to win the game.”
On Kristen Morris…
“Kristen is a great leader. She really knows the game and tells us what we need to get that extra step. She sees the game from a different perspective than all of us. I know she helps me out of the court when I’m struggling on defense or offense.”
On what improvement need to be made…
“We need to practice our free throws they really hurt us today and during other games we have played. We need to focus more and treat the games like practices. When we get on the court we need to block everything out and focus.”
AUBURN HEAD COACH NELL FORTNER
Opening Statement …
“I think we played some really good defense in the second half and that gave us confidence offensively. When Alli Smalley came in and knocked down the two three-pointers, I think that opened the door for us to do some good things. In the first half we struggled, but in the second half we played some pretty good basketball.”
On the mindset coming out after the Georgia loss …
“I think it made us very hungry; that was our first loss and we haven’t experienced that yet this year. We were disappointed in it and we knew we didn’t shoot the ball that well and we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. We were a very hungry team, but at first we were trying to get our feet back under us a little bit, but in the second half I thought we played very well.”
On if LSU is a lot like Georgia …
“LSU is LSU. They have some tremendous athletes on that team and they play very good defense and it’s hard to score against them. If you’re not hitting your outside shots, it’s going to be a long day for you and we came back out in the second half and knocked down some shots.”
On the game plan in the second half …
“We changed the way we were going to play offensively. We didn’t weren’t trying to attack them the same way in the second half like we did in the first because we were not very successful. I thought we found the openings in the second half.”