LSU senior guard Katherine Graham’s tenure with the women’s basketball team started off with a bang, as the Lady Tigers advanced all the way to the Final Four in the 2007-08 season and fell one point short of a national championship berth.
But the team has not been back to that stage since then, losing in the NCAA tournament in the second round in Graham’s sophomore and junior seasons.
With Graham’s senior year getting under way this month, LSU coach Van Chancellor knows her value to the team. Chancellor said Graham has progressed leaps and bounds since her freshman season, which was also Chancellor’s first at LSU.
“It’s been remarkable that Katherine Graham has turned full-cycle,” Chancellor said. “I told her, ‘If there’s anything I wish I would have done, I wish I would have redshirted her, her freshman year.’ I’d love to have her back.”
Graham, a preseason second-team All-Southeastern Conference selection, is the most experienced player on LSU’s roster with 82 career games played and 56 starts, including 40 in a row. She led the Lady Tigers in assists in 2009-10 with 3.5 per game and became the second Lady Tiger to record a triple-double in a game in a triple-overtime loss to Ole Miss in February.
Graham said knowing what a trip to the Final Four tastes like makes her all the more determined to get back in her final season. She and fellow senior guard Latear Eason are the only remaining players on the LSU roster from that team.
“I don’t think it spoiled me,” Graham said. “It just made me hungrier and more willing to get better and get my team to the same position I was fortunate enough to get to my freshman year. I got to see what it takes to be a championship-type program.”
Eason said she and Graham were like sisters as the two freshmen on the 2007-08 roster. The two were roommates and bonded together as the youngest players.
“We went everywhere together,” Eason said. “If we weren’t together, it would be like, ‘Where’s [Graham] or where’s Latear?'”
Eason said they occasionally reminisce about that season, especially when former teammates like Sylvia Fowles, Erica White, Quianna Chaney or Allison Hightower visit LSU.
But Graham said she and Eason are focused on leading the 2010-11 squad with the season opener on the horizon Nov. 14 against Northwestern.
“I’m not the quickest or most athletic guard,” Graham said. “What I lack in physical ability, I try to make up for mentally. There are a lot of things we can work on as a team — execution offensively and defensively, in-bounds plays and other things that come with time … that help us play well together.”
Chancellor said Graham’s role has evolved with the team in her three previous seasons, and her confidence has grown as she has received more playing time.
“She came here as a freshman as a power forward and small forward and has moved to two-guard and the perimeter,” Chancellor said. “She’s improved her shot. She’s the most improved defensive player I’ve been around in a long time.”
LSU’s 2007-08 Final Four berth was the fifth straight in program history to that point and Chancellor’s first Final Four appearance as a head coach.
In his fourth season with the Lady Tigers, Chancellor said “ultimate team players” like Graham will be critical to getting over the second-round hump in the NCAA tournament this season.
“I’d like her to carry me back one more time,” he said.
 
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Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected]