After each LSU women’s basketball practice, the players break their huddle with a prayer and scatter to the sideline benches hoping not to be summoned to talk with nagging reporters.
These student-athletes have lives as well, as some people may forget. And it’s their off-the-court lives that make this mix of 12 people truly amusing.
With the Southeastern Conference and NCAA tournaments around the corner, senior guard Scholanda Hoston and sophomore guard Erica White spared 15 minutes to put game-plan talk aside and bring the Lady Tigers’ off-the-court antics into the light.
 
HEARTBREAK HOTEL
Valentine’s Day is a holiday most women anxiously anticipate each year. But junior guard Katie Antony had different ideas.
“She is the nerd of the team,” Hoston said. “There could be a hurricane blowing through, and she would say, ‘I have to study.'”
And Antony’s educational dedication could not be stopped on the most romantic day of the year.
“On Valentine’s Day one of her ex-boyfriends drove four hours up here to see her,” Hoston said. “He decked out all this whole little setup at her friend’s house, candles and everything, she gets there and stays there for about an hour and says, ‘I have to go, I have to go studying.’ She’s really, really book smart, but she has like negative-five common sense.”
 
STUFFED FRIENDS
White said the team’s three leaders – Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles and Hoston – do have their soft spots.
“Seimone, Scholanda and Sylvia have teddy bears,” White said. “They carry their teddy bears everywhere.”
White said Augustus’ bear is named Valentino, Fowles’ bear is named G-Smooth and Hoston’s bear is named Destiny.
“They keep them in their bags,” White said. “They put them in seat belts on the plane.”
 
OFF-THE-COURT RUN-INS
Usually when players have unfriendly encounters outside practice, it’s a concern for both the coaches and the players.
But the Lady Tigers have their own view on this issue.
“It’s Seimone, Sho [Hoston] and Sylvia [Fowles] versus me [White], Marian [Whitfield] and Khalilah [Mitchell],” White said. “Basically what we’re doing is messing up [each other’s] cars. We’re egging cars, we’re putting food all over cars and we’re taking clothes in the locker room.”
Hoston and White both said each group steals each other’s everyday clothes and hides them in the PMAC.
Both Hoston and White agreed the situation is getting “pretty serious.”
 
NICKNAMES
Each player on the team has her own nickname, but White said her name, Pots and Pans, is the best on the team.
“I have handles [like pots and pans], and they are hot,” White said. “You’re going to need an oven mitt to touch these.”
As for the coaches, Pokey Chatman said the players have not given them names, but Chatman doesn’t doubt her team’s creativity.
“They might have nicknames they don’t want to tell me,” Chatman said.
Hoston suggested the team may create some nicknames for the coaches but Chatman offered one piece of advice.
“We may not want to print [those names],” Chatman said.
 
Kyle is a public relations freshman. Contact him at [email protected]