Defense stands tall at LSU

BATON ROUGE – Senior Seimone Augustus scored 26 points as the second-ranked LSU Lady Tigers handed Arkansas a 64-42 defeat in Southeastern Conference women’s basketball at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center Sunday afternoon. The loss dropped Arkansas to 13-12 on the season, 5-7 on SEC play, while LSU moved to 23-2 and maintained its one-game lead in the league standings at 11-1. On an afternoon with a sell-out crowd for the fourth-largest women’s basketball attendance at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with 13,468, Arkansas could not get its offense engaged, shooting only 26% from the field. But the defense was in full force as Arkansas trimmed almost 30 points off the Lady Tigers’ effort in Fayetteville. “If you tell me before the game that LSU would score only 27 at half, I’d take it,” UA head coach Susie Gardner said. “I thought their key players would get their points, but we had to slow down the rest. We did that early.” While the decision was an improvement over the 93-59 score in Fayetteville earlier in the month, Arkansas could not stop the SEC and national player of the year Augustus. “Great players will take a team on their shoulders, and she was certainly having a Seimone day,” Gardner said. Augustus was the only player in double digits for either team. Leading by 13 at half, LSU led by as many as 30 in the second but Arkansas continued to fight to trim the lead as the bench came on to score the majority of the Lady’Back points. “We kept playing hard, we didn’t fold the tent,” Gardner said. “We kept fighting and we’ll keep our heads up and get ready for Georgia.” Senior Adrienne Bush was one of three players scoring six points to lead Arkansas. “Adrienne played aggressive, she played hard, and she played such a great defensive game that it carried her offense,” Gardner said. “We brought our defense today but the offense just didn’t happen.” Both teams opened colder than President’s Day in Fayetteville as the score remained tied at 2-2 through the first five minutes of the contest. A three-pointer by Sheree Thompson and a short jumper from Rochelle Vaughn gave Arkansas a slow-motion 7-0 run to lead 7-2 as LSU missed eight consecutive field goals after hitting a layup on the opening tip. Augustus snapped the six-and-a-half minute scoring drought with a 5-0 personal run to tie the game at 7-7. It launched a 17-point run by the Lady Tigers to take control of the game as Arkansas was held scoreless for just over nine minutes. Arkansas’ defense limited LSU to only 27 points in the first half, the third-lowest point production this season in the opening 20 minutes. While it was a distinct improvement over the two team’s first meeting where the Lady Tigers scored an opponent high 47, the Lady’Backs scrapped together only 14 points in the first half, a season low. Augustus had 15 by herself in the first half to edge the Lady’Backs at intermission as no player for either team had more than four points. For the game, Arkansas had no one in double digits with Kristina Andjelkovic and Whitney Jones joining Bush with six points each. The Lady’Back bench provided 31 of Arkansas’ 42 points.