Tournament time is when teams are the hungriest. On any given night an upset can happen if a team isn’t locked in.
The importance of the team’s seeding begins to disappear. The focus is all on the basketball which, and this causes many upsets every year.
Teams need to put away their opponent early, so they don’t have a chance to come back. The LSU women’s basketball team has fallen victim to this.
The Tigers finished their regular season and conference tournament with 28 wins and two losses. One loss came from the No. 1 team in the country, and the other came from a good Tennessee team. The way LSU went down to Tennessee left a bad taste in fans’ mouths.
LSU led by 17 at one point, but it ended the game with a 69-67 loss. Comebacks happen, so it’s not entirely shocking, but this isn’t the first time that LSU has failed to close out a game.
The Tigers have had some close calls in their most recent games, starting in January against Arkansas and spanning into February against Ole Miss. Those wins went down to the wire. A team with LSU’s level of talent is expected to take care of business. The Tiger’s carelessness down the stretch of the game has become a reoccurring theme.
A six-win Texas A&M team kept a close game before LSU pulled away until late in the fourth quarter. In LSU’s first game against Tennessee, the Vols hung on until the end, when LSU began to pull away.
Errors like missing defensive assignments, being sloppy with the ball, making bad turnovers, getting late into the shock clock and hoisting up a shot allow teams to stay in the game. LSU has to take care of these mistakes to make a deep run into the tournament.
As cliché as it sounds, The Tigers need to keep their foot on the gas and play like the score is 0-0, especially in tournament games. There are many talented teams in the tournament. By the second-round matchup, little mistakes can have a huge impact on the game.
It would be better for LSU to apply pressure throughout the whole game, making sure that the game isn’t closer than it should be.
Whether it begins at the beginning of the game or halftime, there’s little doubt Kim Mulkey would like her team to put away teams when they have a chance. Mulkey and Alexis Morris have stated that there is work to be done to make the type of run that they are capable of.
