With LSU holding a 30-point lead in the second half Thursday against Arkansas, LSU coach Van Chancellor sat down senior center Sylvia Fowles, three rebounds shy of breaking the Southeastern Conference record for career double-doubles.
Chancellor said with a share of the SEC regular season championship already clinched, he wanted the Miami native to have incentive to play her best Sunday against Mississippi State.
Fowles responded to her coach’s challenge, breaking the record with 6:12 to play in the second half in a 64-49 Lady Tigers’ win against the Lady Bulldogs.
“When I came to LSU, I never dreamed about breaking records,” Fowles said after Wednesday’s practice. “I knew about it because my [Sports Information Director] reminded me about it, but those things don’t change the way that I play.”
Fowles scored 20 points and pulled down 12 rebounds.
With the win, the Lady Tigers (25-4, 14-0) clinched the SEC regular season title outright and completed the SEC schedule unbeaten for just the second time in school history.
“I’m really pleased with our team for reaching the goal,” Chancellor said in a postgame interview on 107.3 FM. “I have only coached two SEC Championship teams, and they both went undefeated, so this is a special bunch of players.”
Mississippi State (16-13, 4-10) trailed by 12 points at halftime but used a second-half run to tie the game at 42 with just more than 11 minutes to play.
Sophomore guard and Louisiana native Alexis Rack led the Lady Bulldogs’ run, scoring nine of her 11 points to cut the lead.
In the first meeting between the teams, LSU held Rack to just seven points on 3-of-18 shooting.
For the season, the Franklin native leads the Lady Bulldogs in scoring, averaging 12 points per game.
“You have to give credit to Mississippi State,” Chancellor said. “We beat them by 50 points the first time, but they were scrappy and they were tough.”
Following a Lady Tigers’ timeout, LSU used a 22-2 run during a stretch of nine minutes to surge ahead 64-44 with two minutes to play.
Following Fowles’ 10th rebound, senior guard Quianna Chaney hit a pair of 3-point shots to seal the win, taking advantage of the Lady Bulldogs double- and triple – teaming Fowles.
Chancellor said senior forward Mesha Williams’ several second-half minutes for LSU were a large factor in the Lady Tigers’ second half run.
“She came in and fed [Sylvia] the ball and didn’t take bad shots,” Chancellor said. “She helped us in rebounding. That was so big.”
For the game, LSU shot nearly 50 percent from behind the arc, but the Lady Tigers struggled from the free-throw line, hitting just five-of-11 attempts.
LSU smothered Mississippi State on defense early and held the Lady Bulldogs scoreless the first eight minutes of the game to take an 11-0 lead.
Chaney got the Lady Tigers out of the gates for the second straight game and scored five of her 18 points in the first two minutes.
With the win, LSU now moves to the SEC Tournament where the Lady Tigers will face the winner of Thursday’s first-round game between Mississippi State and Ole Miss.
Chancellor said LSU will try to accomplish a feat no other Lady Tigers team has ever accomplished next weekend in Nashville.
“We want to be the first team in school history to win the regular season championship and the conference tournament,” Chancellor said. “If we do that, I like our positioning in the NCAA Tournament.”
—-Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]