LSU women’s basketball advances to the round of 32 after beating Hawai’i

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - The LSU Tigers women’s basketball team opened up the NCAA tournament with a 73-50 win over Hawai’i on Friday night behind an impressive 34-point, and 15-rebound performance from star forward Angel Reese.

Early on offense came at a premium as both teams were showing high amounts of energy on the defensive side of the ball. Hawai’i took an early 5-4 lead over the Tigers off some impressive motion offense, and it was clear in the first four minutes of the game that LSU’s offense was struggling to put the ball in the hoop.

To the Tigers’ credit though, they settled things down, got the ball into the paint on offense, and went on a 10-0 run to take a 14-5 lead over the Wahine.

From that point on the Tigers began to establish their physicality on Hawai'i. Last-Tear Poa nailed a big three-pointer in the second quarter to put LSU up 11 points, and then Jasime Carson followed that up with a three of her own to help LSU take a 35-22 lead at the half.

In the second half, Hawai’i battled back a little in the third quarter as they got the game within nine points with just under seven minutes left to go in the third quarter.

LSU would stop that in the fourth quarter as guard Alexis Morris scored all six of her points in that period to put the Tigers up for good.

Angel Reese was dominant as she recorded her 29th double-double of the season, and following the game she spoke with the media saying “I mean, I’m excited, I’m happy, but it’s bigger than that. I want to get to the next game, so taking one game at a time and just focusing on that we’ve got to get a lot of rest and recovery tonight and tomorrow. So just being able to play within the team and do whatever it takes to win.”

“I was pleased, I think we had like 20 plus turnovers, I’d have to look at how many turnovers. Yeah, 21 turnovers we created and we only had 10, we got our hands on a lot of balls, and we were very active. We were very physical, but yeah, I thought starting the game on the defensive end, I thought we did well,” said Kim Mulkey following the win.

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