LSU's in Sweet 16 heaven, thanks to its Angel

It wasn’t exactly a work of art or a paint-by-numbers win that advanced No. 3 seed LSU to its first NCAA women’s Sweet 16 appearance since 2014.

But it was more a numbers-in-paint victory with first-team All-American forward Angel Reese going for 25 points, 24 rebounds and 6 blocked shots in a 66-42 Baton Rouge regional second round conquest over No. 6 seed Michigan Sunday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

LSU (30-2) moves on to play No. 2 seed Utah (27-4) on Friday in a Greenville (S.C.) II Regional semifinal. The Utes advanced with a 63-56 win over Princeton on Sunday.

"When I sat here and told you getting ready to play Michigan, do you remember what I told you?," LSU head coach Kim Mulkey said. "I thought their seed was too low and I told you how tough they were. I thought we were tough tonight. We were tough at all positions. And it started on the defensive end, and it started on the boards. I just thought we were tough."

Despite missing 20 layups, LSU’s 46-26 rebounding domination (including 24 offensive rebounds and an 18-2 second-chance points advantage) allowed the Lady Tigers (30-2) to attempt 22 more field goals than the Wolverines.

"I was not very efficient (8 of 23 from the field) at all tonight, a lot of those rebounds came from a lot of my misses," said Reese, the first player in NCAA women's tourney history with 25 points and 24 rebounds in a single game. "And then, I thank my teammates for missing a lot of shots -- missing some shots so I could get the rebound. We have to rebound and defend to win. As far as we go, we have to rebound and defend."

So, a night when no LSU player shot better than 50 percent and when the Lady Tigers barely outshot Michigan from the field 35.3 percent (24 of 68) 34.8 percent (16 of 46), LSU’s bundle of point-blank range misses didn’t matter.

Reese and LaDazhia Williams, who had a double-double of 10 points and 10 rebounds, cleaned up a lot of misses and messes.

"She's just really special -- Angel Reese's don't come around the block every day," Michigan head coach Kim Barnes Arico said. "She just had a heck of a game and has really improved. And they were physical and really limited our scoring and didn't allow us to get into rhythm."

Michigan cut LSU’s 15-point halftime lead to eight points at 30-22 with 6:10 left in the third quarter, But the Lady Tigers built a 16-point lead by the end of the period and finally boosted their cushion past 20 points for the game’s last six minutes once Reese finally got some scoring help from guards Alexis Morris and Flau’jae Johnson.

Johnson was 0 of 6 from the field before she hit two straight 3’s in the fourth quarter to finish with 8 points and 6 rebounds. Morris scored five of her game-total 11 points as LSU hit 7 of 11 shots in the final period.

Michigan (23-10), which was denied a third straight trip to the Sweet 16, was led by guard Laila Phelia’s 20 points.

"LSU did a great job of taking a lot of things away that we wanted to do, whether that's pushing us off of passing lanes, riding us off of screens," Michigan guard Leigha Brown said. "When you are facing that for 40 minutes it kind of wears you down and it takes you out of rhythm in what you want to do. They did a great job of that tonight."

Mulkey's decision to start Ohio State transfer Kaiteri Poole instead of the more slender Jasmine Carson was a wise choice. Poole's Big 10 Conference experience of past physical games against Michigan in previous years paid off as she held Brown to 3 points on 1 of 7 shooting.

"That kid is a baller," Mulkey said of Brown. "When I played her at Baylor two years ago, she was an off guard and we couldn't stop her with a 6-1 perimeter player on her. Now she's playing point guard which made me really nervous. And I just thought that Kateri was just solid. Just anything Brown was going to get, she was going to have to work for."

From the opening tip, the Lady Tigers made it their mission to relentlessly attack the boards. In fact, LSU’s 12-7 lead at the end of the first quarter would have been substantially larger had it been able to cash more offensive rebounds.

In one 11-second sequence, LSU missed five shots including four layups and collected five offensive rebounds. It wasn’t until the Lady Tigers came out of a media timeout that it cashed that Williams cashed in a second-chance layup.

Reese and Williams combined for 10 of LSU’s first quarter points as the Lady Tigers missed every shot they attempted outside the paint including eight three-point clanks.

With the Michigan defense crowding Reese, it became obvious someone had to step up for LSU and start hitting outside shots. LSU guard Jasmine Carson, who has had a knack of being a streak shooter, suddenly hit three straight 3-pointers in an 11-0 Lady Tigers’ run in the first 3:37 of the second quarter for a 23-9 lead.

LSU’s sudden outside flurry opened the door for Reese. She scored the Lady Tigers’ last seven points in the final 5½ minutes for a 30-15 halftime lead as she ended the first half with 13 points and 14 rebounds.