By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE – For one half, Super Sunday was a Super Stinker for 13th-ranked LSU.
Among other negatives, the out-of-sorts Tigers missed 9 first-half layups while Alabama made 9 3-pointers.
LSU trudged to the locker room trailing by 10 points, the largest halftime homecourt deficit in Kim Mulkey’s three seasons as the Tigers’ head coach. And then. . .
“Halftime. . .what did I say to them?” Mulkey said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Today’s Sunday, it was like a prayer meeting.”
Taking Mulkey’s likely fire-and-brimstone sermon to heart, the defensive-pressin’, rebound clawin’, shot-making, ball-stealin’ Tigers finally showed up like a Louisiana late afternoon thunderstorm.
An uncharacteristic full-court LSU defensive press leveled Alabama with a 14-1 run in the first 4½ minutes of the third quarter, finally waking the Tigers from their slumber to send them barreling toward an 85-66 SEC victory in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Once the Tigers got rolling it was just a matter of LSU (21-4, 8-3 SEC) choosing its victory margin over the Crimson Tide (19-7, 6-5 SEC), who had a four-game winning streak snapped.
“We told each other that if we didn’t wake up and play defense, we were going to lose this game,” said LSU junior All-American forward Angel Reese, who finished with 27 points, 19 rebounds and 6 assists. “We may need to use the press more.”
Don’t count on it. Mulkey has always viewed employing a full-court defensive press and sprinkling in some occasional zone defense as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency measure.
Well, she did both vs. the Crimson Tide and even uncharacteristically called an early timeout with the game just three minutes old after Alabama drained its third 3-pointer for a 9-4 lead.
“There was a period of time in that first half where we looked terrible,” Mulkey said. “We looked terribly out of shape. Credit Alabama. They hit shots. They had us a step slow in everything we did.”
Behind 41-31 at halftime, LSU outscored the Crimson Tide 54-25 in the second half. It included a 30-9 third-quarter beatdown in which Reese had 11 points to outscore Alabama alone.
Once Reese got scoring help – guards Flau’jae Johnson and Mikaylah Williams scored 16 and 14 points respectively – and reserve point guard Last Tear-Poa added 11 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists after she started the second half, the gritty Crimson Tide were done.
LSU crushed Alabama 50-6 in points in the paint and 27-8 in points off turnovers.
Alabama, led by Aaliyah Nye and Loyal McQueen with 19 and 14 points, respectively, held the lead for 23:10. But the Tide had their world flipped upside down by a defensive press that Mulkey said the Tigers don’t practice much.
“Exactly what we did well in the first and second quarters – take care of the basketball, don’t give up easy baskets, get some stops, and get your transition game going – we didn’t do in the third and fourth periods,” Alabama head coach Kristy Curry said.
“Credit LSU. They made a much bigger run to finish the game than we did to start the game. They were tougher. They were more physical. They got to the free throw line (23 of 29). They annihilated us in rebounding (54-34).”
With Mississippi State’s 90-70 home loss Sunday to Florida, LSU gained sole possession of second place in the SEC with five regular season games remaining.
The Tigers don’t play again until next Monday at Texas A&M.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com