SEATTLE — After earning the school’s first victory over a top-seeded opponent, the No. 4-seeded LSU women’s basketball team takes on third-seeded Georgia in the NCAA West Regional final on Monday at 8 p.m. CST at Bank of American Arena.
The Lady Tigers (26-7) drummed Texas, 71-55, one season after the Longhorns kept LSU from the Final Four with a decisive victory in Palo Alto, Calif.
Georgia (25-9) is seeking its sixth trip to the national semifinals and its first since 1999. The Lady Bulldogs have never won an NCAA Championship, with runner-up finishes in 1985 and 1996. Georgia staved off elimination Saturday night when Purdue senior Erica Valek missed an uncontested layup with less than two seconds to play that would have forced overtime. The 66-64 victory over No. 2-seeded Purdue set up only the seventh regional final match without a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in NCAA women’s basketball history.
On Jan. 25, then 17th-ranked Georgia defeated No. 12 LSU, 80-74, in Athens, ending the Lady Tigers’ 15-game winning streak that dated back to Nov. 21, 2003. LSU shot only 32 percent from the field (24 of 75) despite outrebounding the Lady Bulldogs, 47-36. LSU tied the game at 73-73 with 55 seconds to play, but couldn’t get over the hump for the victory.
“I think that we have grown tremendously as a whole,” LSU point guard Temeka Johnson said about her team’s change since the first meeting with Georgia. ” We were a young team and we had a lot of things that we could have improved on. In the Georgia game and some games that we lost, we started to grow as a team.”
LSU and Georgia have never met in the NCAA Tournament, and will meet for the second time in one season for the first time since 1996. In 1996, the Lady Tigers lost in the regular season before eliminating Georgia from the SEC Tournament’s second round in Chattanooga, Tenn., 73-71.
LSU sophomore sensation Seimone Augustus, who has averaged 25.3 points per game in the NCAA Tournament this season, comes off a career-best showing against Texas. The 6-1 guard slashed past the Longhorns for 29 points on 14-of-19 shooting. Her 14 field goals set a school record in NCAA play.
Point guard Temeka Johnson picked up her third-straight double-double of the tournament and is averaging 13.7 points and 12.3 assist in 2004 NCAA play. She, too, set a school record in tournament play with 13 assists on Saturday evening.
The Lady Bulldogs have been without leading scorer Kara Braxton since Feb. 20, when the 6-6 star was dismissed from the team. Senior forward Christi Thomas now leads the team both offensively (13.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game) and emotionally. Guard Janese Hardrick, who hit the game-winning shot with 15 seconds to play against Purdue, and guards Sherill Baker and Alexis Kendrick each average near 10 points per game to give the Lady Bulldogs a scoring threat around the perimeter.
Georgia leads the all-time series between the schools, 18-8, and has won six of the past eight meetings. This all-SEC contest in the West Region may not be the only one in the Elite Eight, as No. 1-seeded Tennessee and No. 2-seeded Vanderbilt are poised to advance and face
each other in the Mideast Region with victories late Sunday.
An interesting coincidence surrounding this clash of SEC schools is that the LSU football team had to defeat Georgia in the SEC Championship game in order to advance the National Championship game in New Orleans. This season’s Final Four takes play in New Orleans at the Arena on April 4 and 6.