A classic basketball adage says defense is the key to winning a championship.
If this is true, then the LSU women’s basketball team played defensively Thursday night in their 76-58 win against the University of Kentucky.
The Lady Tigers smothered Kentucky from the start. They held the Lady Wildcats to just four points in the first eight minutes of the game, thanks to full-court pressure that kept the Wildcats’ offense unbalanced.
Kentucky entered the game shooting nearly 42 percent as a team, but that number dropped to just 35 percent in the first half against the Lady Tigers.
“I just thought they started the game with a lot of energy,” Kentucky coach Mickie DeMoss said. “They were very aggressive on the defensive end, and we didn’t handle the pressure well in the first half.”
LSU caused 17 first-half turnovers, which led to 19 Lady Tiger points.
Juniors center Sylvia Fowles, forward Ashley Thomas and guard Khalilah Mitchell each led the team with two steals.
LSU junior guards Erica White and RaShonta LeBlanc smothered Kentucky’s sophomore point guard Carly Omerod, causing her to turn the ball over six times in the first half while not allowing her to get an assist.
Coming into the game Kentucky’s starting five averaged 47.1 points per game, but the Tigers’ defense held the Kentucky starters to 13 first-half points.
Kentucky center Sarah Elliot said LSU’s defense overwhelmed the Lady Wildcats in the first 20 minutes.
“We were turning over the ball way too much,” she said. “They had a lot of good pressure on our perimeter so they probably couldn’t get it in to me.”
The Lady Tigers also contained Kentucky’s 3-point shooting.
The Wildcats average nearly five 3-pointers a game this season, but LSU’s perimeter defenders held the Wildcat shooters without an outside shot for the first 38 minutes of the game.
“I thought from the very beginning we established some semblance of execution on both ends of the floor, and the most obvious end was defensively,” LSU coach Pokey Chatman said. “You saw a concerted effort by an entire team and the bench to really try and carry out the scouting report defense.”
The Lady Wildcats got into a groove in the second half but never got close enough to challenge the 18-point lead LSU had built at halftime.
Despite only turning over the ball three times in the second half, DeMoss said her team needed to play a complete game to beat LSU.
“I thought that we did a good job to start the second half,” she said. “We were more poised, but you just can’t play just one half against LSU.”
LSU scored 24 points from 20 Kentucky turnovers during the game.
The 20 turnovers are a season-high for the Wildcats, who average nearly 15 turnovers a game this season.
Elliot said she did not expect Kentucky to perform so poorly on a big stage.
“I was kind of surprised,” she said. “We probably just came out more intimidated by them.”
Fowles said the team’s solid defense was a total team effort.
“Everything contributed to our defense,” she said. “It started with our perimeter play putting pressure, then once they got across half-court us big girls did some cheating on them to make sure they didn’t get any easy buckets.”
Chatman agreed with Fowles’s assessment of the team defense.
“Bottom line: you saw a concerted effort from our entire team to maximize some of the principles we have been practicing all year,” she said. “And the result was a nice win.”
—–Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]