After a 53-46 victory at home against Arkansas on Sunday, the LSU women’s basketball team looks to keep up its conference play momentum.
The Lady Tigers go on the road to face Tennessee at 6 p.m. on Thursday in the Thompson-Boling Arena.
“The focus is to make sure that we capitalize off of the momentum that we’ve created by beating a really good Arkansas team,” coach Nikki Fargas said. “It’s always tough to beat a team twice in our league and to be able to do so, it should give us some confidence, if you will, going into our game at Tennessee. We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us.”
The Lady Tigers (15-6 overall, 4-4 Southeastern Conference) trail behind Tennessee in SEC rankings as the No. 8 seed.
The Lady Tigers prepare to face Tennessee’s leading scorer, guard Diamond DeShields. She is the second leading scorer in the conference averaging 17.7 points per game.
LSU’s leading scorer, junior guard Raigyne Moncrief, comes in at the No. 13 spot and averages 14.9 points per game.
Tennessee leads conference play in rebounds with an average of 39 rebounds per game. LSU bottoms the list in the No. 13 position again, averaging 29.5 rebounds per contest.
Going into the matchup against Tennessee, Fargas said the team needs to be able to consistently follow through on defense.
“We have to really work our defense like a gimmick,” Fargas said. “We can’t take away everything, but we’ve got to be smart in what we will take away, and paint is first priority for us. We don’t want to allow teams, especially Tennessee, to have those paint points, whether it’s through dribble drive, their post-game or offensive rebounds.”
Tennessee’s size alone may give LSU some trouble, but the Lady Tigers also pose some threat.
LSU sophomore guard Chloe Jackson averages 14.2 points per game and Moncrief averages 14.9 points per game.
Moncrief said the team needs to, among other things, keep doing what they’re good at — turning over.
In LSU’s last contest, the Lady Tigers were able to turnover Arkansas 22 times.
“Tennessee has always been a good team from the jump,” Moncrief said. “They’re a really talented team and they’re a big team as well … They have a chance of out rebounding us so we have to do the little things like boxing out, and really we have to score in transition.”
Senior guard Rina Hill said communication is key for the matchup against Tennessee, because she knows the environment will be hostile and loud, especially since the last time the two teams met, LSU gained a home victory.
“It gives us confidence going into their place,” Hill said. “We had fewer bodies last season and we were still able to manage to get the win. It was on our home court but, and it’s going to be a hostile environment, but we know we can win against a good basketball team so we just got to play our game.”