Rebels Drop Tenth Straight Against LSU

BATON ROUGE, La. (Ole Miss Athletics) – Ole Miss women’s basketball put up a fight early, but a consistent shooting effort out of LSU proved too much to overcome in an 84-55 loss to the Lady Tigers inside the Maravich Center on Thursday night.

The Rebels owned the momentum early, jumping out to a 7-2 lead in the opening minutes, but LSU responded by stealing the momentum right back, which it would not relinquish the remainder of the game. The Tigers closed the quarter on an 18-9 run and used a 15-0 run in the opening minutes of the second quarter to give LSU a comfortable 40-24 halftime lead.

Leading the way for Ole Miss were two solid outings by Alissa Alston (16 points, four assists) and Shelby Gibson (15 points, 10 rebounds), as well as decent showings from Madinah Muhammad (nine points, three rebounds) and Barbara Johnson (nine points).

For Alston, this is her fifth-straight double-digit scoring game and 18th of the season. Tonight also registers as the first career double-double for Gibson, who did so with a career-high 10 rebounds. Muhammad, meanwhile, will return home with just eight points left to the 1,000-point milestone for her career at 992 points.

LSU never shot worse than 53.3 percent in a quarter tonight, lighting up the nets for an Ole Miss opponent season-high 55.4 game shooting percentage. The Lady Tigers had four in double-digits, led by Raigyne Louis, who tonight became the third active SEC player to cross the 1,600-point mark in career scoring with 25 points this evening. Ole Miss was able to find success on the foul line at 84.2 percent (16-of-19), but LSU – which ranks as the top three-point defense in the SEC – used a strong defensive gameplan to keep the hot-shooting Rebels off the three-point line at a season-low 5.6 percent from beyond the arc.

The Rebels return home for a nationally televised tilt vs. Georgia on Monday night inside The Pavilion at Ole Miss.