The LSU women’s basketball team can’t seem to escape player injuries, much like the Lady Tigers struggled in 2015-16.
Freshman center Faustine Aifuwa is out for the season because of a knee injury she received during practice at the end of October.
The squad is also experiencing the loss of senior guard Rina Hill, who is out because of a hip injury. Hill has missed two games to begin this season. She had not missed any in her 96-year career prior to the 2016-17 season.
Coach Nikki Fargas said the team has experienced this before and is taking each day, and injury, step by step.
“With Rina [Hill], every day she’s getting better, so the more we can rest her, the better she’s going to feel,” Fargas said. “It’s really bothering her that she’s not out there.”
Fargas also said LSU will be welcoming sophomore forward Tatum Neubert back to the team in the near future. Neubert missed last season because of transfer rules and will miss some of the beginning of this season because of a knee injury as well.

Rice

The Lady Tigers hope to keep up their win streak alive when they host Rice at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in the PMAC.
LSU (2-0) will be challenged when they contest against Rice (1-0) Fargas said.
“With Rice, I see a team that has a balanced attack,” she said. “They really do a great job of pushing the ball and transition and looking for early offense. They’re going to spread you with the ability to shoot the three and play of the bounds.”
The Tigers didn’t play Rice last season, but LSU must increase its defensive play, Fargas said.
Rice is tied for ninth with Southern Mississippi and UAB in the C-USA standings and finished the season with a 9-22 overall record and a 7-11 record in a conference play last year.

UConn

The Lady Tigers will face off against the undefeated Big East Conference’s University of Connecticut at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday in the PMAC.
UConn ranked first in the Big East with a 18-0 record in conference play and an overall record of 38-0.
Mitchell said the Lady Tigers could capitalize on some of the mistakes they are seeing earlier on, like “paint points” and “high posts,” to win the rest of the season.
“Mistakes that we’ve had, especially in the previous games that we’ve played, is paint points and hot posts,” Mitchell said. “Paint points are like low block coverage, so the posts are touching the ball too easily, so that means we’re playing behind and we’re not getting good position.
“High posts is when the team is at the free throw line and we just let them catch it there … once they catch it there, we collapse, and then they have vision to see everything else which is open.”