After opening Southeastern Conference play with a 68-65 win against Florida on Friday night, the LSU women’s basketball team fell to No. 1 South Carolina, 75-51, in its SEC home opener Sunday afternoon.
The Lady Tigers (7-7, 1-1 SEC) struggled on both sides of the ball, shooting only 34.4 percent from the field and allowing South Carolina to dominate the paint.
“This was a disappointing loss because we did not execute what we had been practicing,” said LSU coach Nikki Caldwell. “When we see things and we think that they are going to work and they don’t, we are obviously not on the same page in that regard, and we have got to get on the same page with what the game plan is.”
In LSU’s last nine games, senior guard DaShawn Harden led the Lady Tigers in scoring with 14.9 points per game.
South Carolina held Harden scoreless in the flow of play until she hit a layup with nine minutes remaining in the second half.
“DaShawn is a pretty good player,” said South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. “What we tried to do was just make her work hard for a lot of catches and make it real difficult for her to get clean looks.”
Harden finished shooting 4-for-12 but led the Lady Tigers with nine points.
Another part of the Lady Tigers’ troubles offensively was their inability to hit open shots, both in and outside the paint. LSU missed four layups in the first half alone, costing it easy points against South Carolina’s talented offense.
Most of the Lady Tigers’ second half points came in the last four minutes.
LSU struggled to produce assists, tallying only four as a team.
“Defensively, they gave us some looks by rotating their defense, but we didn’t make the extra pass,” Caldwell said. “We only had two assists at the half and four for the game. You are not going to win many games with only four assists.”
Defensively, the Lady Tigers struggled to stop South Carolina’s freshman guard A’ja Wilson, particularly in the second half.
In the first half, Wilson led South Carolina with nine points and eight rebounds.
Wilson went off in the second half, scoring 12 points in only 12 minutes of action. Wilson recorded her third-straight double-double with 12 points and 13 rebounds.
“[Wilson] is a great player, but it comes back to us playing defense together,” said freshman forward Stephanie Amichia. “We needed to make sure she didn’t have the ball in her hand and close out. All five [of us] needed to make sure she had a problem making that shot. I don’t think we gave her that issue and we let her get the ball where she wanted it.”
Containing Wilson was not the only problem defensively for LSU. The Lady Tigers failed to execute their game plan to take away South Carolina’s points in the paint.
Coming into the game, South Carolina averaged 42.8 points per down low. South Carolina put up 36 points in the paint against LSU, including 20 points in the second half alone.
“I am a tad bit disappointed, mainly in myself, because there are things I could have done better,” said senior forward Sheila Boykin. “If you go down the line, we all could have brought something more than what we brought today…We could have won that game if we did what we were supposed to do.”