Two minutes X 5 equals LSU's 4th quarter of Final Four perfection

LSU’s players trudged towards their bench. The Lady Tigers trailed Virginia Tech by nine points, dazed by a 28-7 Hokies’ nine-minute blitz that started with 3½ minutes left in first half.

Tech’s zone defense turned LSU’s offense into zombies and the Lady Tigers’ defense was in stunned shambles.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey, in her 76th NCAA tournament game as a head coach and seventh as the Lady Tigers’ boss, turned to her "break glass in case of emergency" psychological motivation.

As far as she was concerned, there weren't 10 minutes left to play but rather two minutes remaining multiplied by five.

“The way I approached that was you got two minutes left in the game,” Mulkey said. “You're down eight. You got to come out smoking and on fire. You got to play like you're never going to play again. I wanted them to come out, pick the pace up defensively, fly to the offensive boards as if you have two minutes to play.”

Exactly 125 seconds later after LSU scored the first seven points of the fourth quarter to cut the Hokies’ lead to two, Tech head coach Kenny Brooks called time out hoping to restore order.

Meanwhile, back in the LSU huddle, Mulkey wound back the clock again.

“Okay now, you're back in the ballgame,” Mulkey told her team. “We don't have eight minutes. We have two minutes.”

After Tech’s Georgia Amoore hit a 3-pointer, LSU continued with a 29-point fourth quarter that propelled the Lady Tigers to a historic 79-72 victory for the school’s first Final Four win ever for the women’s and men’s programs.

“Herstory,” said LSU All-American forward Angel Reese after she recorded her 33rd double-double of the season with 24 points and 12 rebounds.

“Herstory,” confirmed LSU point guard Alexis Morris, who scored a game-high 27 points including the Lady Tigers’ first five points in the opening 56 seconds of the fourth quarter.

After a rollercoaster three quarters which saw LSU lead by nine at 32-23 with 4:48 in the second period before falling into a hypnotic funk, Mulkey snapped her fingers and her team came out of its death spiral trance just in time.

Once the Lady Tigers’ offense and defense started meshing in a 22-3 run in the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter to establish a 10-point lead, it was like lunch time at the neighborhood diner.

Though Morris and Reese scored 10 points each in the final period, all five starters got a slice of comeback pie.

Freshman forward Flau’jae Johnson scored 5 of her game-total 7 points including a steal and layup to give LSU the lead for good with 5:44 left and a huge offensive rebound and follow bucket for the first double-digit Lady Tigers' advantage with 3:04 remaining.

Post-grad forward LaDazhia Williams scored 2 points, grabbed 3 rebounds and had a steal to finish a 16-point, 7-rebound performance.

Sophomore Kateri Poole, inserted into the starting lineup for LSU’s NCAA tourney second-round win over Michigan, had 2 points, 3 rebounds and an assist in the fourth quarter push. Her final totals were needed contributions – 5 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals.

“Defensively we really, really got very aggressive,” Mulkey said. “ Alexis started it off. Flau'jae gets the steal and the finish on the other end. You finally started seeing Angel flying to the offensive boards. She's hard to block out.

“And you just started doing some things that we've been doing all year. Did that take place because we were down and we were desperate? Possibly. Or did that take place because they were getting tired? Possibly.

“I don't know how to give you the exact answer on that, but I just know that, when you're down, you've got to do something different, and I just thought we turned it up a notch.”

The fourth quarter teams stats reveal the havoc LSU caused – a 18-0 shutout in points scored in the paint, 7 points off 6 Tech turnovers (LSU didn’t have a fourth quarter turnover) and 10 second-chance points off 6 offensive rebounds.

“They just started playing more aggressive,” said Hokies' guard Amoore, who scored 17 points. “Obviously, we knew that they were going to come out with that aggression with us being up, and I just don't think we were good enough to stop Morris coming down and playing with that confidence.”

Morris, a native Texan from Beaumont, had her best game of the tournament.

“The last pregame thought I was thinking about my best game I ever played in high school,” Morris said. “That's what I was thinking about, those moments when I just felt like unreal, I was just playing out of my body. I was in the zone. I was focused.

“I was just thinking about a lot of those moments, just kind of reminiscing. Maybe it could spark and give me a little edge on the court, a little more confidence.

“And being back home, it just means everything to me. I'm a Texas kid. I was born and raised here. Just to have my supporters and people I grew up around, people that have been knowing me since I was a child, and now they can see how to persevere and be relentless. Like it's pretty special, man.”

Even more so if LSU can knock off Iowa to win the national title.

And to the Lady Tigers' motivational advantage, the Hawkeyes are the media darlings of this Final Four, especially after Iowa guard Catlin Clark scored 41 points in a 77-73 semifinal upset late Friday night of previously unbeaten and defending national champion South Carolina.

"If you know me, I'm never satisfied," Morris said. "I'm super excited that we won, but I'm hungry, like I'm greedy. I want to win it all so I can complete the story."