After a season troubled by injuries, the LSU women’s basketball team looked to set the tone for its 2016-17 season against LeMoyne-Owen Sunday in the PMAC.
LSU defeated LeMoyne-Owen, 81-34, in an exhibition match before regular season play begins Friday. The Lady Tigers controlled the glass, out-rebounding LeMoyne-Owen 50 to 29 and created turnovers grabbing 17 steals in the victory.
The Lady Tigers also did a good job of sharing the ball with 24 assists. LSU coach Nikki Fargas said the team played selflessly and were “looking to make the best shot for the team.”
“Defensively, I thought our effort to really disrupt LeMoyne paid off for us,” Fargas said. “It allowed us to get some transition baskets, which we like our defensive effort to come up with deflections like the steals.”
LeMoyne-Owen’s record for the 2015-16 season was 7-19 overall and a 5-12 finish in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. LSU’s record was 10-21 overall and 3-13 in the Southeastern Conference.
Senior forward Alexis Hyder, who lead the team in scoring during the 2015-16 season, had a team high of 25 points Sunday.
Even though it was an exhibition game that didn’t phase her.
“It was about getting the cobwebs off of us,” Hyder said. “Everybody plays their role … we were all looking for each other, and I think that’s most important. We literally passed up a lot of shots to look for someone else. It felt good to see how we had a great team effort.”
Fargas used her bench, and the team kept up high energy from start to finish.
Sophomore guard Chloe Jackson played for 30 minutes and finished with 12 points and 8 rebounds. Sophomore guard Shanice Norton played for 28 minutes and grabbed 10 rebounds.
Junior guard Jenna Deemer, who made a return to the court after sitting out for most of the 2015-16 season because of an illness, played for 23 minutes. Deemer was second on the team in scoring with 17 points, and shot 3-of-8 from the three-point line.
Deemer said the team is able to keep up its energy and finish the game because of the Lady Tigers’ hard work in practice.
“We all have to work hard,” she said. “We know we have a bench to come up — coach always talks about that starting five getting us that jump to start off, but when the bench comes in, they shouldn’t know our bench from our starting five.”
The Lady Tigers will play their first regular season game against Louisiana Tech on Friday Nov. 11 in Ruston, Louisiana at the Thomas Assembly Center at 6:30 p.m.