KG's career high, great team effort, lead Lady Tigers
BILL MARTIN (1-21-10):
BATON ROUGE -- Junior guard Katherine Graham drained her first eight shots en route to a career-high 24 points, and the 18th-ranked LSU women's basketball team returned to the win column, 69-52, over South Carolina on Thursday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center."I am pleased we won, but I am equally as pleased with how we won tonight," LSU head coach Van Chancellor said. "We won against a really good team. We out-rebounded them, we had fewer turnovers than they did, we took quality shots, and we played smart. We had a lot of enthusiasm early and I think the Lady Tigers have to play a certain way."The Lady Tigers (14-3, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) snapped a two-game losing skid and never trailed against the Gamecocks. The win vaulted LSU back over the .500 mark in league play and set the stage for a showdown with No. 3 Tennessee at 5 p.m. CST Sunday in the Maravich Center.South Carolina (10-8, 3-3) saw its three-game winning streak come to an end as they fell to the Lady Tigers for the 14th straight time dating back to 1999. The Gamecocks' last win over LSU occurred at the 1998 SEC Tournament.LSU's stingy defense, which surrendered 80 points for the first time in nearly six years on Sunday at Ole Miss, returned to its attacking ways and shut down one of the SEC's premier scorers.Senior guard Allison Hightower, who finished with 16 points, held South Carolina's Valerie Nainima to five points on just 2-of-9 shooting. Nainima entered Thursday's game with an 18.5 scoring average that ranked third in the SEC.Graham torched the Gamecocks for 22 points in the first half as she finished 8-of-8 from the floor in the first 20 minutes. Sophomore forward LaSondra Barrett erupted for 14 second-half points to finish with 18, her fifth straight double-figure game.
Read the entire article (complete with quotes, video and photos): http://bit.ly/4YY9fJ