Although the LSU women’s basketball team blew out Ole Miss by 29 points at home on Jan. 29, the Lady Tigers could not complete the season sweep and fell to Ole Miss, 58-57, in Oxford, Mississippi, on Thursday night.
The Lady Tigers (15-12, 9-6 Southeastern Conference) came out flat in the first half, shooting 29 percent and allowing Ole Miss (17-11, 7-8 SEC) to get into an offensive rhythm. Despite taking a one-point lead with less than a minute left, LSU could not complete a second half comeback and dropped its second-straight game.
“We’ve got to be a team that feels this loss,” said LSU coach Nikki Caldwell in a post-game radio interview. “We’ve got to understand there’s a certain way you’ve got to play when you put that uniform on. Tonight, I felt we did a disservice to the uniform. We didn’t bring the same grind, the same hard work and the same work ethic that we’ve seen. We’ve got to get back to that.”
The Lady Tigers struggled to create any defensive stops in the first four minutes, stalling their offensive production because they were unable to establish their transition game.
Ole Miss started the first half with a 12-2 run over the first four minutes. Sharpshooter junior guard Gracie Frizzell led the Rebels with two 3-pointers during the stretch.
LSU shut down Frizzell in LSU’s initial matchup against Ole Miss, but in the rematch Frizzell exploded to shoot 4-for-6 from behind the arc and tallied 14 points.
During the first four minutes of the game, the Lady Tigers shot only 1-for-5 from the floor and turned it over three times. Junior guard Anne Pedersen tallied the only Lady Tiger field goal during the stretch with a jumper at the 17:45 mark.
“If you look at the first four minutes of the first half, our defense let us down,” Caldwell said. “We were unaware or had a lack of awareness of where the shooters were… We missed a lot of jump shots. We missed a lot of easy looks to the basket…Those four minutes really dictated the tone of the game, and that’s where the game was initially lost.”
Sophomore guard Raigyne Moncrief, freshman guard Jenna Deemer and junior forward Ann Jones combined for 16 of the Lady Tigers’ 23 first half points and cut the Rebels’ lead to four points going into the break.
LSU came out on fire in the second half, shooting 53.6 percent from the floor. Junior guard Danielle Ballard and Moncrief led the Lady Tigers with 12 second half points apiece to tie the game with less than a minute left.
Moncrief sparked an 11-4 Lady Tiger run with 4:25 remaining.
Ballard changed the momentum of the game at the 1:02 mark by tying the game, 54-54, with an old-fashioned three-point play.
With nine seconds left on the clock, Ballard left the game with a knee injury and did not return although she walked off the court unassisted.
Unlike the Lady Tigers’ late-game win against Mississippi State on Jan. 15, Ballard was not available to save LSU with a 3-pointer as the clock expired to push the game into double-overtime.
After Ole Miss senior forward Tia Faleru hit two free throws and put the Rebels up by one point, Moncrief drove into the paint and missed a jumper. But Ole Miss touched the ball before it went out of bounds, giving LSU another chance with two seconds left.
Coming out of a timeout, LSU had one last chance and was able to get the ball into Moncrief’s hands. But she missed a jumper to seal the victory for Ole Miss.
“We were looking to get the back door, but when we saw that they were going to go with a smaller guard we did a lob play [to Moncrief],” Caldwell said. “She caught it at the free throw line and she had a nice look, but like I told Moncrief, ‘This game did not come down to that one jump shot, it came down to a lot of different areas that broke down.’”
After dropping their last two games, the Lady Tigers return to the PMAC on Sunday to host Texas A&M in their final home game of the season.
LSU hopes to earn its 10th conference win and avenge its 55-48 loss to then-No. 9 Texas A&M on Jan. 9 in College Station, Texas.
Senior forward DaShawn Harden and senior forward Sheila Boykin will take the court at home for their last time as Lady Tigers.