LSU's sizzling second half gives Tigers a road win and a sweep of Texas A&M
Somehow, LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey combined Mardi Gras and a Texas homecoming on Sunday afternoon in College Station.
Tigers’ guards Khayla Pointer and Alexis Morris made sure the day was a success, scoring 25 points each in a 74-58 SEC win at Texas A&M after LSU trailed by six points at halftime.
Mulkey, who coached 21 seasons and won three national championships at Baylor before taking over at LSU this season, was greeted by a large contingent of Baylor fans who made the 90-mile drive southeast on Highway 6 from Waco to College Station.
Before the game, Mulkey and her staff met with Baylor and LSU fans in attendance and handed out hugs and 200 king cakes she ordered from Calandro’s Grocery in Baton Rouge.
“You spend 21 years of your life in Central Texas,” Mulkey said. “Your kids grow up there. You have lifetime friends. For them to come and cheer for LSU, I just wanted to do something special in return.
"I love Baylor. I love the Baylor fans. And I love the LSU fans that were here. A lot of LSU fans traveled, too, so it wasn't all Baylor fans. It was a great contingency of people cheering and hollering L-S-U."
After a rocky first half in which the Tigers shot just 3 of 16 from the field in the second quarter, LSU gave its unique mixture of fan road support plenty to scream about in the second half.
The Tigers (21-4 overall, 9-3 in the SEC) scored as many points in the third quarter – 27 – as they did the entire first half. LSU outscored A&M by 22 points in the second half 47-25 with Porter and Morris combining for 32 (16 points each).
A&M was led by Kayla Wells with 23 points and Aailyah Patty with 11 points and 10 rebounds.
“She (Mulkey) has got the best combination of guards in the league,” said A&M coach Gary Blair, whose team dropped to 14-10 overall, 4-8 in the SEC. “I give her credit for the ball-screening action late because we couldn't guard them off of the screen.”
A 10-4 LSU run to open the second half tied the game at 37-37 with 6:12 left in the third quarter. The Tigers caught fire and never cooled, shooting 60 percent from the field (15 of 25 including 3 of 4 3-pointers) in the second half and 87.5 percent from the free throw line.
“We played poorly in the first half but I just felt like we were in control of the game,” Mulkey said. “I told them (her team), `You’re only down by six and you've played as poorly as you can.’ I just thought in the second half we pushed it more and we got to the foul line a lot.’”
Morris, who transferred to LSU this past summer after playing for Texas A&M, scored 30 against her old team in a 75-66 victory in Baton Rouge on Jan. 2. For the season, she’s averaging 27.5 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists against the Aggies while hitting 19 of 32 (59.3 percent) from the field (including 7 of 10 3-pointers) and 10 of 14 (71.4 percent) from the free throw line.
“When you play a team that you were a part of, it can go one of two ways,” Mulkey said. “It can be really, really bad or really, really good. And she (Morris) played really good when we played A&M at LSU and then she played really good today.”
Morris and Pointer handled the bulk of the scoring while post players Autumn Newby and Faustine Aifuwa took care of most of the rebounding along with guard Jailin Cherry. Newby had 7 points and game-high 13 rebounds, Aifuwa added 6 points, 8 rebounds and 4 blocked shots and Cherry had 9 points and 6 rebounds.
Mulkey noted that this is the first time that the Tigers’ four graduate students – Pointer, Aifuwa, Cherry and Newby – have played on a team that has 21 wins.
“We're not a team that was supposed to do anything, we weren't picked to even be in the top of the SEC,” Mulkey said. “We weren't ranked. We fight hard to win. It may be ugly at times, it may be impressive at times. But 21 and 4, we’ll take it.”
The Tigers have four games left in the regular season – road games at Mississippi State on Thursday and at Tennessee on Feb. 27 sandwich two straight home dates vs. Florida on Feb. 20 and vs. Alabama on Feb. 24.
LSU is currently in third place in the SEC, two games behind league leader South Carolina at 11-1, a game behind Tennessee at 9-3 and a half-game ahead of Florida at 8-3.
The SEC tournament is set for March 2-6 in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.