The LSU women’s basketball team battles its third consecutive top 20 foe Thursday as the Lady Tigers travel to Columbia, S.C., to take on the No. 16 South Carolina Lady Gamecocks.
Overall, the Lady Tigers are 11-3 all time versus the Lady Gamecocks, including a 72-62 victory last season when the Lady Gamecocks were ranked ninth in the nation.
Head coach Sue Gunter knows going to Columbia to play South Carolina is another big test for her team.
“South Carolina is very, very good,” she said. “They were an Elite Eight team last year, losing to Duke.
They lost a couple of players I think that were important to them, but I think the quality of their starting five is truly outstanding.”
The Lady Tigers (18-1, 6-1 Southeastern Conference), winners of three straight games since losing their first game of the season to Arkansas, rank No. 4 in the country.
South Carolina has won two straight games and is 16-4 (4-3 SEC) on the season.
Winning on the road in the SEC is tough, according to Gunter, but she believes the Lady Tigers are accustomed to playing in harsh conditions.
“I don’t know if anybody can really be prepared for it [the road in the SEC],” she said. “I think in our case, the fact that we’ve got a pretty experienced team and we’ve all been there before … all the kids have been through the mill, they’ve all been to all of these places before, and they kind of know what to expect.”
“We don’t talk much more about being on the road than just the regular game preparation, and they know it’s going to be a hostile environment,”said Gunter. “They know when they go in that people are going to get on them, but they seem to handle it OK.”
Freshman Seimone Augustus, who was named SEC Player of the Week following the Georgia game last Sunday, is one of the youngest Lady Tigers to experience playing on the road in the SEC.
“It’s very tough,” she said. “It’s physical, very aggressive, makes you work hard, makes you want to come out and practice hard every day to get better. We’re just going to come out and play like the No. 1 team every time we get a chance.”