The LSU women’s basketball team dropped its second consecutive game on Saturday against No. 22 Rutgers, 64-57, as the Lady Tigers’ offensive woes continued.
“It’s disheartening when you know that this team is really trying to do their best, and we’re going to get better,” said LSU coach Nikki Caldwell. “This experience that they are going though is only going to make them better. We’ve got to challenge ourselves to really be more disciplined offensively in some of our action. We’ve got to be better with taking care of the basketball.”
LSU (2-3) battled offensively from the start against a tough Rutgers (3-0) squad, leading to a back-and-forth half that included 13 different lead changes. 
Although starting junior guard Akilah Bethel scored the first two layups for the Lady Tigers, senior guard DaShawn Harden took over the offense after coming off the bench four minutes into the half.
Harden led the Lady Tigers in scoring in the first half with nine points, just one more than the entire starting lineup combined.
Within a span of two minutes in the first half, Harden hit three 3-pointers and finished the half shooting 50 percent from beyond the arc.
Despite the leadership of Harden in the first half, the Lady Tigers shot only 32.4 percent from the field, which was their worst-first half shooting performance of this season.
“We had a lot of really, really good looks,” Harden said. “We were patient on offense, they just didn’t drop unfortunately.”
Sophomore guard Raigyne Moncrief struggled shooting in the first half, going 1-for-11 and hitting both of her free throws.
Moncrief entered the game as the Lady Tigers’ leading scorer, averaging 11.3 points per game. But she is still adjusting to the grind of the regular season after recovering from a torn ACL that ended her 2013-2014 campaign.
“I think Moncrief just needs to settle down,” Caldwell said. “I think she gets rushed, and I think that she’s trying to put too much on her plate. We talked about her foot speed and her ability to get to the basket. She can do that at any time, and she’s in a different role this year…Now, she’s having to step up over into [former LSU guard Jeanne Kenney’s] role, and she’s going to be fine.”
Rutgers took over the game in the second half by forcing turnovers with physical play.
The Lady Tigers took care of the basketball in the first half, tallying only eight turnovers. The Scarlet Knights disrupted LSU’s offense in the second half with 13 turnovers forced, nine of which were steals.
“I think the one thing about the way that we play, we allow the ball to be manipulated by a lot of different players,” Caldwell said. “We look for movement, we look for back doors, we look for handoffs, we run staggers and we run pin downs. We run a lot of different play action…[Rutgers is ] a very good defensive team.”
Offensively, the Lady Tigers hope to improve as they head to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, this week to compete in the Hardwood Tournament of Hope.