The LSU women’s basketball team is looking to end a two-game road losing streak when it travels to Oxford, Mississippi to play Ole Miss tonight at 6 p.m. on SEC Network Plus.
It is LSU’s (15-11, 9-5 Southeastern Conference) second matchup this season against Ole Miss (16-11, 6-8 SEC). The Lady Tigers prevailed in their first meeting, walloping the Rebels by 29 points on Jan. 29.
Ole Miss enters the game riding a two-game win streak after beating Auburn and No. 13 Kentucky. It previously had been on a seven-game skid before beating Auburn on the road. Ole Miss may also have emotional sentiment, as it is the team’s senior night and final home game.
LSU coach Nikki Caldwell said her team can’t count past accomplishments and hopes to win in the future.
“We have to make sure that our team stays in the moment,” Caldwell said. “We can’t go back and relive the game that we played last month because Ole Miss is a different basketball team, and so are we. We’ve got to focus in on the things that we do well and execute our game plan both on the offensive and defensive end but also understand that there is going to be a lot of emotions being that it is senior night for Ole Miss.”
After defeating Georgia by a convincing 12-point margin on Feb. 19 at the PMAC, LSU traveled to face an offensively challenged Arkansas team, which ranks 11th in the SEC in field goal percentage. It allowed the Razorbacks to shoot 45 percent from the field and lost by 22 points.
The loss dropped LSU to fifth in the SEC standings and allowed No. 11 Mississippi State and No. 12 Texas A&M to take a one-game lead to be tied for the third seed in the SEC Tournament.
Senior forward Sheila Boykin said the loss didn’t sit well with her and her teammates, and they began working immediately after the game to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“After the game, before we found out we had to stay in Arkansas that night, we were watching that game,” Boykin said. “It probably wasn’t even two hours after the game, and we were watching film. We looked at the film and were like, ‘This isn’t us. We have to get better.’ We will move on. It’s just focusing on the inefficiencies that went on in that game.”
The Ole Miss roster boasts senior forward Tia Faleru, the SEC’s best rebounder and a top-five scorer in the conference with 14.9 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. In their last matchup, the Lady Tigers held Faleru to five points on 2-of-9 shooting and seven rebounds.
To complete the season sweep of Ole Miss, Caldwell said the Lady Tigers will need to finish plays close to the rim and control the area around it on defense.
“We have to make sure that we are taking great shots and that we are putting our players in the position to score the basketball,” Caldwell said. “Paint points are going to be a focus for us because we want to score there. We also have got to knock down the mid-range jump shots. We did a nice job the last time we played them, because our defensive effort was very good. We have to make sure that we are taking that same type of mentality on the road that we play with here at home.”
You can reach Stanton Vignes on Twitter @stanvignes_TDR.