BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 12th-ranked women’s basketball team will look to return to the Sweet 16 at the NCAA Tournament for the third time in four years on Sunday when the Lady Tigers play host to Stephen F. Austin at 7:35 p.m. at the Maravich Assembly Center.
The contest will be televised by NCAA Productions and it can be seen in the Baton Rouge area on College Sports-Southeast. The game will also be aired on the LSU Sports Network and can be heard in the Baton Rouge area on 107.3 FM.
LSU, 23-6 overall, enters the contest coming off a 77-54 first round win over Liberty on Friday night, a victory that stretched the Lady Tigers’ non-conference home court winning streak to 47 straight. LSU, who is 7-1 all-time at home in NCAA Tournament games, has not lost a non-conference home game since a 68-62 setback to Lamar on Jan. 30, 1995.
Stephen F. Austin, a member of the Southland Conference, is 28-3 overall after upsetting sixth-seeded Xavier, 73-72, on Friday. The game between the teams will be the 15th meeting overall, but the first since the 1993 season. SFA has won two straight over the Lady Tigers with LSU’s last win over the Ladyjacks coming in 1991 when current LSU associate coach Pokey Chatman hit a halfcourt shot at the buzzer for a 79-77 win in Nacogdoches.
LSU coach Sue Gunter served as head coach at Stephen F. Austin for 12 years and she’s considered to be the coach that put the Ladyjacks on the map in women’s college basketball. Gunter remains as the winningest coach in SFA history with 266 wins at the Nacogdoches school.
“I think anybody who watches this game will be in for a real treat,” Gunter said at Saturday’s pre-second round press conference. “I think it will be an exciting game. Stephen F. Austin poses a lot of problems for us. They are very athletic, have good size and a very quick. They have perhaps as good a backcourt as we have played this year.
“We have got to do a good a job as we can to slow down their transition and we have to do a better job on the boards that what we’ve been doing. I think another key for us will be taking care of the basketball.”
LSU enters the contest as one of the most offensive-efficient teams around as the Lady Tigers are shooting 49.3 percent from the field and they average just over 20 assists per game, while turning the ball over only 15 times a contest, all numbers that lead the Southeastern Conference.
Individually, junior guard Marie Ferdinand and senior Katrina Hibbert continue to be the catalyst for the Lady Tigers. Ferdinand is tops on the squad and second in the SEC with 17.6 points a contest, while Hibbert is averaging 14.4 points and 5.2 assists a game.
Junior April Brown, called by the LSU coaching staff as the team’s “unsung hero” is averaging 11.3 points a game, but she scored 18 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists in the first round win over Liberty. DeTrina White (11.7 points, 8.7 rebounds) and Angelia Crockett (3.6 points, 4.4 assists) round out the LSU starting lineup.
Sunday’s game will also mark the final home contest for Hibbert, who will leave as having played in more SEC wins (37), more NCAA victories (5) and more home wins (59) than any other player in school history. With a win on Sunday, Hibbert will become the first player in school history to reach the Sweet 16 three times in a career.
Shawnta Johnson (15.8 points, 6.4 rebounds) and Stephanie Whitmore (15.3 points, 4.6 assists) are Stephen F. Austin’s top hands.