Most Southeastern Conference women’s basketball coaches have a firm grasp on what to expect from their teams prior to each game.But with five regular season games remaining, LSU coach Van Chancellor has learned to expect the unexpected.”We have had a lot of trouble getting our team to carry things from the practice court into the big arena,” Chancellor said last week. “And we just can’t do what I’d want us to do on offense because of it.” LSU averages 60 points per game this season, enough for No. 11 in the SEC. One reason the Lady Tigers have had offensive deficiencies is an inability to shoot the basketball from the free-throw and 3-point lines. The Lady Tigers have made just 29 percent of their long distance shots this season, No. 9 in the SEC. And LSU has made just 48 3s this season, which is last in the conference. The next closest teams — Georgia and Auburn — have made 89 3-pointers. The numbers are uglier if you take away junior guard Andrea Kelly’s 26-for-70 on the season. The rest of the Lady Tigers shoot just 24 percent from behind the arc.But free-throw shooting has also been poor. LSU shoots an SEC-worst 65 percent from the charity stripe for the season, a stat that baffles senior forward Kristen Morris.”It’s got to be our focus because we knock them down day after day at practice,” Morris said. “When we get into games, we need to block everything else out and just knock them down.” But what has many in the Lady Tigers’ locker room puzzled is the team’s offensive inconsistency.There have been high points this season, including Thursday’s 68-53 win against Arkansas, when the Lady Tigers shot 50 percent from the field for the game.LSU also scored 42 points in the final half of Sunday’s loss to Mississippi State, sparked by 23 second-half points from Kelly. But the bad times have been equally as abundant, including the opening half of Sunday’s loss where the Lady Tigers mustered only 13 points and 23 percent shooting.LSU had similar problems in the second half of its first meeting with Mississippi State — They scored just 14 points while hitting only four field goals. The team’s NCAA tournament hopes depend on a strong finish to the season, and sophomore guard Katherine Graham said it’s up to each individual in the locker room if the team wants to fix its struggling offense.”I think we just have to come in on our own and start working on shots,” she said. “We need to start putting the burden on ourself to do extra.” But for Chancellor, the answers aren’t as obvious, as the majority of his players were recruited with the assumption that they could shoot the basketball.”I told them at the beginning of the year that they had the ability to score the ball better than a lot of the players on this team last year,” Chancellor said following the team’s 61-30 win against Texas Southern earlier in the  season. “They just have to have the confidence to step up and knock it down.”
 
 
 
—-Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]