With every travel or errant pass, LSU women’s basketball coach Nikki Caldwell gives a pained look from the sideline — it has happened 452 times this season.
The coach went so far as to make members of her team carry basketballs with them everywhere to try and reverse the effects, but the Lady Tigers are still racking up turnovers at an alarming rate.
The Lady Tigers beat No. 5 Kentucky last weekend by double digits, surprising considering the team’s frequent miscues.
LSU had 26 turnovers in the game against Kentucky — just four fewer than its 30 shot attempts for the entire game — and needed to rely on a stellar defense to win the game.
It’s been the same script LSU has followed all season. The ebb and flow of prolonged winning or losing streaks has coincided with the effectiveness of the defense, but the turnovers have remained unchanged.
In LSU’s eight losses, it’s actually averaging fewer turnovers (18.6 per game) than it is overall for the season (19.7).
Even during their 10-game win streak, the Lady Tigers averaged 19.2 turnovers per game.
The problems have come when LSU doesn’t have the stifling defense to match its propensity to hand the ball back to the other team.
LSU gave up 67 points per game in its eight losses — 14 points per game more than its season average.
“When you turn it over, you can’t allow them to score the next basket,” Caldwell said. “We’ve got to cancel out that turnover, and the way that you do that is through your defense.”
While Caldwell realizes that LSU’s defensive performance is the key to victory, the team’s continued inability to hang on to the ball dampens what has been at times a prolific offense.
The Lady Tigers have had double-digit turnover numbers in each of their 23 games played this season, and posted 20 or more turnovers in 12 games.
Some of the inflated turnover numbers could correlate with the fact that LSU has played this entire season with just one point guard on its roster, sophomore Jeanne Kenney.
Kenney hasn’t been immune to the turnover bug — she sports the team’s highest single-game turnover number this season, with eight in both the Kentucky win and a loss to Florida on Feb. 2.
But after not being able to find a solution to the problem, Kenney talked to Caldwell about which turnovers were acceptable and which weren’t.
“We had this talk and it was very difficult for Coach Nikki to say this, but there’s a good turnover and there’s a bad turnover,” Kenney said. “The good turnovers are when it’s a dead ball situation and they have no hope of coming in transition.”
The bad turnovers are the opposite, presenting the opposing team a chance for a fast and easy basket.
Caldwell has said at times this season that the turnovers are something she’s going to have to live with as a coach — as long as the team wins in spite of them.
 
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Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected].