The Alabama women’s basketball team will take on the Louisiana State Tigers on Thursday, March 3 in the first round of the Southeastern Conference tournament. The game is slated to begin at 2:30 p.m. and will air live on Fox Sports Network.
The Tide (16-13, 5-11) has won five out of the last seven games and is coming off of a 92-79 road victory over Arkansas in its final regular season game. The team looks to continue its success heading into the tournament.
“We’re definitely going to have momentum going into this game because of how we played at Arkansas on the road,” said senior forward Tierney Jenkins. “That definitely gave us a lot of momentum. We will feel like we know what we did bad against [LSU] last time, and we’re hoping to go out here and get a win Thursday.”
Junior guard Ericka Russell said, “We’re pretty excited. I think you play the way you practice, and the way we’ve been playing is going to give us momentum and confidence going into the tournament. We’ve been working hard. It’s not the way you start; it’s the way you finish. Hopefully, we’ll be ready and come in and continue to win.”
Alabama traveled to Baton Rouge earlier in the season and fell to the Tigers 72-43. The team was coming off of a road loss at Tennessee at the beginning of conference play. According to head coach Wendell Hudson, the team was not playing particularly well during that time.
“I think we’re a totally different team than we were when we played earlier in the season,” Hudson said. “I think it was also a situation where we weren’t playing particularly well at that particular time, and now we are back playing the way we need to play. I don’t think the game earlier in the year is going to have any effect on the way we’re going to approach it and the way we’re going to play in the SEC tournament. I think we’ve gotten better and I think LSU has gotten better.”
Jenkins said, “Offensively, we kind of stood still the whole time and really didn’t have any movement on the floor. Defensively, we let them have wide-open, easy shots. We didn’t get to press and play how we wanted to play.”
The Tide and the Tigers have met three times in postseason play. Alabama has won two out of three of the contests. LSU has lost three out of their last four regular season games. Staying intense on defense and making it an up-tempo game is key for the Tide to claim the victory. Russell said the team’s mindset is completely different from the earlier meeting, and they are ready and excited for the battle.
“We want to play Alabama basketball,” Russell said. “We want to continue to play hard and continue to play the way we’ve been winning, come in with a lot of intensity, playing our up-tempo, defensive game. Hopefully, we will come out with a ‘W.’”
Hudson said, “I think we need to continue to play the way we’ve been playing here of late. I think the biggest difference is that we’ve been making shots. If we can score and get the game into a transition game, we feel good about our opportunities and our chances to be successful.”
