The sixth ranked LSU women’s basketball team will put its undefeated record on the line Thursday night as they visit 16th ranked Tennessee.
ESPN.com bracketologist Charlie Crème called the Lady Tigers an enigma because their soft non-conference schedule makes it difficult to evaluate them.
Coach Kim Mulkey is fine with the enigma label.
“We’ve been called worse, right?” Mulkey said “I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as we’re just – we puzzle people. We were an enigma when we won the championship. So that’s good.”
Crème points out that the Lady Tigers non-conference schedule is ranked as 205th in the nation. When they won the national championship in 2023, the Lady Tigers nonconference schedule was ranked 320th.
But the schedule finally toughens for LSU. Four of their next six games are against teams ranked in the top 10 in the NET.
On Thursday in Knoxville, the 17-0 Lady Tigers will take on 13-1 Tennessee led by first year coach Kim Caldwell.
Tennessee looks to run on offense, they’ll press full-court on defense and Caldwell will play a lot of players, and at times will sub out all five players that are on the floor for five players off the bench.
“They have a ton of new players, about ten transfers and the style of play is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Mulkey said. “They score a lot of points and they make you play fast with their press and it’s gonna be quite a challenge to keep them from scoring in the 90s. It seems to be their magic number.”
Tennessee is averaging 97 points a game, while LSU is averaging 92 points a contest.
LSU leads the SEC in field goal percentage defense as they are holding opponents to 34% shooting from the floor. But Mulkey says her team needs to be better on defense.
“I see all the stats, understand that, but’s just the little things that I think we can do better.”
On Rocky Top, they’ll have to defend the perimeter as Tennessee has shot 511 three-pointers. That’s nearly 100 more than Arkansas, who has fired off the second most three-pointers.
