The road to another national championship for the LSU Lady Tigers basketball team looks difficult as they are a 3-seed in a region that features top-seeded Iowa and second-seeded UCLA. Coach Kim Mulkey’s team beat Iowa in the national title game last year and UCLA holds its opponents to 60 points a game.
“Initially I just thought ooh, this is a tough, tough region and I don’t care about the seeding, you just want to get the first and second round game at home,” said Mulkey.
LSU will host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. They will face Rice, who won the American Athletic Conference Tournament as a ten-seed.
Rice is 19-14 overall, 9-9 in the AAC. Rice lost its five regular season games and then won four straight in the conference tournament for the automatic bid.
Rice is a defensive-minded team, holding opponents to 63 points a game.
If the Lady Tigers defeat the Owls, they’ll play either sixth-seeded Louisville or 11th-seeded Middle Tennessee who easily won the Conference USA regular season and conference titles. Louisville is LSU point guard Hailey Van Lith’s former team. Mulkey expects Van Lith will handle it well.
”Everybody’s smiling at her, (when the bracket showed Louisville coming to Baton Rouge) said Mulkey. “Hailey is a baller. If that matchup happens, she’ll be ready, but Middle Tennessee is pretty salty too.”
LSU has not played since a grueling SEC Tournament that ended with a loss to top-ranked South Carolina on March 10th. Mulkey says her team has been able to get healthy during this extended break.
Mulkey says Angel Reese’s ankle has gotten better. Mikalya Williams’ foot injury has improved and Last Tear Poa has been running on the treadmill. The next step for Poa is individual workouts.
LSU will play Friday at 3 PM in the PMAC.
