The Lady Tigers found themselves in unfamiliar territory during the first seven minutes of last night’s game.
LSU trailed Ole Miss by six points with 13:41 remaining in the first half, the first time the team trailed an opponent since Jan. 22 against Georgia and its largest deficit since Jan. 16 versus Connecticut.
But the Lady Tigers outscored the Lady Rebels 30-9 the remainder of the first half en route to a 78-63 victory on Sue Gunter Sunday in the PMAC.
Senior guard Scholanda Hoston said it was what the Lady Tigers were not doing gave the team early problems.
“They were in a really soft man-to-man, but they were really trying to pack their defense in and keep us out of the paint,” Hoston said. “We weren’t cutting hard and moving and screening hard, doing the things we’re good at.”
LSU coach Pokey Chatman said it was encouraging to see her team fight off an early deficit, come back and execute well the rest of the game.
“It wasn’t a surprise in terms of how [Ole Miss] went about getting their points,” Chatman said. “They’re going to play hard, they’re going to play smart and they’re going to make you beat them.”
Ole Miss guard Carla Bartee led the Lady Rebels with 17 points, hitting four out of her six three-point attempts. Ole Miss’ leading scorer, guard Armintie Price, struggled from the field, only hitting 5-of-13 shots from the floor, but scored 15 points.
Lady Rebels coach Carol Ross said her team’s game plan was to make the game ugly, but Ole Miss was unable to keep pace with sophomore center Sylvia Fowles.
“I thought we battled them up about as well as we could,” Ross said. “Our problems really just came on the offensive end.”
Fowles frustrated the Ole Miss defense throughout the game, scoring 21 points and grabbing 13 rebounds. She became the first player in LSU women’s basketball history to record a double-double in five straight games.
“I really thought Fowles really just terrorized us on the offensive boards,” Ross said. “She’s very productive when she got them.”
Fowles is five inches taller than any player listed on the Ole Miss roster, and the Lady Tigers outrebounded Ole Miss 42-30.
Offensively, LSU shot 50 percent for the game, led by senior guard Seimone Augustus who scored 22 points on 10-of-18 shooting. Defensively, the Lady Tigers held Ole Miss to 37.1 percent shooting for the game as Ole Miss missed 39 of their 62 attempts.
In the second half, Ole Miss played with LSU step-for-step as both teams scored 38 points.
 
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