SPOKANE, Wash.—The No. 3 seed LSU Tigers do not offer the deepest bench or the best guard play or the most efficient shooting. But they give themselves more second chances than any other team in the country. They found enough of those Friday to make their way into the Elite Eight.
Against the No. 2 NC State Wolfpack, the Tigers let an early lead crumble and required a late surge to close it out, 80–73. NC State protected the ball more effectively, and it led a deeper, more balanced attack. It shut down the Tigers’ leading scorer Flau’jae Johnson. But there was no competing in the paint with LSU. The Wolfpack tried mixing in almost every big available on their roster. None of them could hang for long with Aneesah Morrow.
It felt at times as if Morrow was pushing LSU forward through sheer individual force of will. (Her teammates agreed: “She got in the huddle and told us that this was not going to be her last game,” LSU sophomore Mikaylah Williams said.) At 6' 1", Morrow rarely has a size advantage inside, even against a team that likes to play small as often as NC State. Yet she consistently has the edge in terms of grit.
Morrow never seems to let a possession die. There is no obvious match for her motor: She leads Division I in offensive rebounds per game at 5.2. Against NC State on Friday, she had nine as part of a 30-point, 19-rebound effort that led LSU.
“We knew she was going to be a handful,” Wolfpack coach Wes Moore said. “And she was.”
NC State tried doubling Morrow, and it tried forcing her outside, and it tried getting around her. It sometimes briefly stymied her but never fully stopped her. “I missed a lot of shots around the basket, chippy baskets,” Morrow said. “But I still have to be able to make an impact offensively when my shots are not going in. That’s going up and being able to react and get another rebound.” Her nine offensive boards tied her season high.
LSU finished with 22 second-chance points. NC State had just 11.
“I mean, there’s your game right there,” Moore said. “That’s a big swing in the outcome.”
This is not the kind of scoring performance the Tigers often require from Morrow. (It was just the second game this season where she has finished with 30 or more points.) Their offensive production is usually far more evenly distributed. LSU has the most clearly defined “Big 3” in D-I, the only roster to have three players each averaging at least 17 ppg, a trio of Johnson, Williams and Morrow. But it was Morrow alone from that group who kept LSU in the game for long stretches on Friday.
Williams came alive with 10 points in the fourth quarter to help close it out. But Johnson struggled throughout the night, finishing with just three points in 30 minutes, her lowest scoring performance of the season. (She did not play the final minutes of the fourth quarter after getting tangled up going for the ball and leaving with double vision and swelling around her eye. LSU did not have an update on her immediately after the game.) Such a lopsided effort from their big trio is not the standard for the Tigers.
But they can make it work if they must. That’s partially a credit to the grit and skill of Morrow, telling her teammates in the huddle that she refused to lose this one, then demonstrating just how much she meant it. And it’s partially a credit to how the rest of this roster can work to fill in the gaps. Junior forward Sa’Myah Smith, who averaged just six points a game in the regular season, scored 21 on Friday. It was the first time all season that she had been called on to play all 40 minutes.
There is more than one way for this roster to win. LSU has played so far in a way that suggests the ability to punch above its seed. Which is familiar territory: When the Tigers won the 2023 national championship, that was also as a No. 3 seed. The roster has turned over quite a bit in the intervening two years; Angel Reese is gone, and so are the other heroes of that championship game, Alexis Morris and Jasmine Carson. But that championship group had a knack for pulling out plucky, back-and-forth games and showing up at the right time, even when theoretically overmatched. And this group does, too.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Aneesah Morrow, LSU Dominate the Paint in Sweet 16 Win Over NC State.
