LSU was pouring in the points and Texas Tech was frantically, futilely trying to bail out the boat.<\/p>\n
The tipping point came with 5:44 left in the third quarter, just after Flau\u2019jae Johnson hit a streaking ZaKiyah Johnson with a 50-foot pass \u2014 the kind of throw LSU fans hope new quarterback Sam Leavitt will be able to make this fall \u2014 for a fast-break layup that put the Tigers ahead 60-28.<\/p>\n
Tech coach Krista Gerlich called a timeout and told her team straight:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t want them to hang a hundred on you,\u201d Gerlich said, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to quit shooting it so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Too late. Even though LSU coach Kim Mulkey began pulling her starters with 7:44 left \u2014 starting with Flau\u2019jae, a senior, to a thunderous and tearful standing ovation \u2014 the LSU scoring dreadnought never really dropped anchor. The Tigers indeed hung a hundred on Texas Tech, winning 101-47 Sunday in their NCAA tournament second-round no contest to advance to the 18th Sweet 16 in program history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the most beautiful thing I\u2019ve been a part of,\u201d said Johnson, who set LSU\u2019s scorching scoring pace with 24 points in 24 minutes of court time. \u201cSomething I\u2019m going to remember forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will this end up being a team LSU fans remember forever, like the 2023 team that Angel Reese and Flau\u2019jae Johnson helped lead to the program\u2019s first NCAA championship?<\/p>\n
Despite all the fireworks, it\u2019s still hard to tell. No offense to Texas Tech or Jacksonville, which LSU obliterated 116-58 Friday with its most points ever in an NCAA Tournament game, but these were two mighty outclassed opponents. Gerlich, who is trying to get Texas Tech back to the level it was when she played on the Red Raiders\u2019 1993 NCAA title team, candidly admitted that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big gap between 1 through 8 and 8 through 64,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou saw it today, right? We\u2019re a 7 seed. There’s more parity coming, but there’s still the upper echelon of NCAA Division I women’s basketball and there’s the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
LSU (29-5), the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Sacramento 2 regional, is part of that upper echelon. In fact, the Tigers are doing things that put them in their own echelon.<\/p>\n
Their back-to-back 100-point games this weekend in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center (that\u2019s 217 points total) gave LSU the solo NCAA Division I record for most 100-point games with 16. That eclipsed the 15 \u201chang a hundred\u201d games by the 1986-87 Long Beach State team, which it must be said, did that without the benefit of a 3-point line.<\/p>\n
LSU\u2019s 54-point margin of victory Sunday is tied for the third-biggest in an NCAA second-round women\u2019s game, or for a different perspective, tied for the largest margin in a second-round game since 1983. The Tigers, who outscored the Lady Raiders 33-7 in the third quarter, already have four 30-point quarters in this tournament after posting three against Jacksonville. That\u2019s the most 30-point frames in the NCAA Tournament since the women went to quarters 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t just scoring. LSU\u2019s defense also put the clamps on a Texas Tech squad that had to grind out a 57-52 win Friday over Villanova to get here. Still, the Tigers outscored the Lady Raiders 26-0 in the paint in the first half and 24-0 on fast-break points for the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s just a testament to everybody buying in and locking in and knowing what we need to do to get far in this tournament run,\u201d said Mikaylah Williams, who also knocked down 24 points. \u201cWhen we lose those games, we slack off defensively. We have mishaps, but I think locking in and buying in on the defensive end is what really, really got us here.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the Tigers are in the Sweet 16 for the fourth straight year under Mulkey, set to take on Duke in Friday\u2019s regional semifinals out in Sacramento, California. Duke (26-8), which LSU beat 93-77 on Dec. 4 on the Blue Devils\u2019 home court, took out Baylor 69-46 Sunday. That has to be a relief to Mulkey, who now won\u2019t have to deal with the distraction of facing the program she left for LSU in 2021 after leading the Lady Bears to three NCAA championships.<\/p>\n
Beating Duke won\u2019t be a breeze \u2014 \u201cThey\u2019re better, I\u2019m sure, and I think we\u2019re better,\u201d Mulkey said \u2014 but everyone anticipates an LSU-UCLA rematch in the Elite Eight. The Bruins, who must beat Oklahoma State on Monday to advance, should have been the No. 1 overall seed over UConn. They\u2019re that good and that scary.<\/p>\n
But, based on the games here, so is LSU. The Tigers appear to be playing their best ball at the best time to do it, pouring in the points and clamping down on defense in equal measure.<\/p>\n
Can you say \u201cTough out?\u201d That\u2019s what LSU has become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LSU was pouring in the points and Texas Tech was frantically, futilely trying to bail out the boat.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[32566,168,170,169],"class_list":["post-217861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-hardwall","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}