Yahoo Autos NCAA tournament: Michigan women's basketball loses to LSU, 66-42: Game thread replay
2023 NCAA women's basketball tournament: No. 6-seed Michigan women's basketball (23-9) vs. No. 3 LSU Tigers (29-2)
Matchup: No. 6 Michigan (23-9, 11-7 Big Ten) vs. No. 3 LSU (29-2, 15-1 SEC), NCAA tournament Greenville 2 region second round.
Tipoff: 7:30 p.m. Sunday; Pete Maravich Assembly Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
TV: ESPN.
At stake: Winner faces either 3-seed Utah or 10-seed Princeton on Friday in Greenville, South Carolina, for spot in Elite Eight.
NCAA history
The Wolverines’ victory improved them to 11-10 all time in 11 tournaments, with five straight second-round appearances under head coach Kim Barnes Arico. (Though they made it all the way to the Elite Eight last season.) LSU appears to be achieving the desired results in its second season under longtime Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, starting with a 23-point win over 14-seed Hawaii in the first round on Friday. After losing in the second round last season, the Tigers are 45-27 all-time in the tournament over 28 seasons, with five trips to the Final Four (albeit with no title game appearances). All five Final Four appearances came during a five-season run from 2003-08; the Tigers have made the Sweet 16 just twice (2013-14) since then.
FRIDAY'S FIRST ROUND:Michigan women roll over Rebels, 71-59, to advance to NCAA tournament 2nd round
TROPHY CASE:Michigan women's basketball has 3 players selected to Big Ten all-conference teams
Scouting the Tigers
It’s a simple formula for Mulkey’s Tigers: Shoot often inside the arc (LSU’s 50.2 2-pointers per game ranks sixth in the nation), do it well (50.6% on 2-pointers, good for 34th nationally), and if you miss, rebound the ball (47.2 boards per game, third nationally, and 17.2 per game on offense, good for fourth) and start all over again. What about 3-pointers? We’re not saying LSU can’t hit them — their 35.9% success rage ranked 26th in the nation — but they don’t really try a whole lot, either: Their 15 3s per game ranks just 307th out of 350 teams.
Scouting the Wolverines
The Wolverines’ plan isn’t so different, especially as executed on Friday afternoon against UNLV: U-M attempted just 15 3s, hit six of them (and four of those, on six tries, came from senior guard Maddie Nolan) and shot 45.5% (20-for-44) on 2-point tries. Really, it wasn’t a good shooting day for the Wolverines, who hit nine of 13 shots in the third quarter and just 17 of 46 (36.9%) in the other three frames. Fifth-year guard Leigha Brown seemed to penetrate the Rebels’ defense in the paint with few issues. Doing so against the Tigers will be another matter altogether, but we’ll get to that.
Four on the floor
There are plenty of talented players on both rosters, but here are four players — two Wolverines and two Tigers — who could come up big on Sunday:
U-M’s star: G Laila Phelia
Despite having nearly two weeks off from games, the sophomore may not be fully healthy. In just her third game back after missing seven straight in February and March, she logged 32 minutes and scored eight points with 11 rebounds while wearing a bulky knee brace. Phelia, who hails from Cincinnati, entered the tournament averaging 16.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.5 steals a game. That scoring average is nearly double that of her freshman year (8.8) while only going from 22.9 minutes a game to 33. When Phelia’s scoring game is on, so is the Wolverines’; she scored at least 20 points 10 times this season, with U-M going 8-2 in those games.
Off the bench for U-M: G/F Elise Stuck
Barnes Arico kept her bench short on Friday in Baton Rouge, keeping four of her starters on the court for at least 32 minutes. The lone exception was forward Cameron Williams, who played just under 16 minutes. Filling in for her was Stuck, who logged just over 22 minutes. It was a definite uptick in minutes for the 6-foot-1 junior from Charlevoix, who was averaging 9.7 minutes a game entering the NCAA tournament. She scored just two points (one field goal attempt, one make) but filled the stat sheet in other ways, with seven rebounds, an assist, a steal and three blocks. The Wolverines won’t have the size advantage against LSU — the Tigers feature five forwards listed at 6-2 or taller; the Wolverines have six such forwards, but only two (Williams and Emily Kiser) log serious minutes — that they had against UNLV, but they’ll need every capable minute they can get in the paint.
LSU’s star: F Angel Reese
The reason for that, of course, is Reese, who made the AP’s All-America team for the second straight season. The 6-3 sophomore averaged a double-double (17.8 points, 10.6 rebounds) last season at Maryland, but didn’t do much damage in her first two seasons against the Wolverines, averaging seven points and 7.3 rebounds in three games as a Terp. This season, she posted a double-double in 29 of her 31 games, including the Tigers’ win over Hawaii on Friday (34 points, 15 rebounds). (The only opponents to stop her from getting a double-double: No. 1 South Carolina, which held her to 16 points and four rebounds on Feb. 12, and Georgia, which held her to 15 points and six rebounds on March 3.) This season, Reese has averaged 23.7 points and 15.5 rebounds, all while shooting 54.5% on 2-pointers.
(Perhaps Michigan can convince Reese to try some 3s; she’s just 1-for-6 from beyond the arc this season.) So what lured her to the Bayou? The seafood, apparently. (Remember, she’s from Maryland.) As she told WSLAM magazine, her official visit to Baton Rouge featured an intense seafood spread: “We went to coach's house and we had seafood laid out. ... I'm talking about crab legs, oysters, shrimp, crawfish," Reese said. "I was like, 'Oh, I could get used to this.' "
Off the bench for LSU: F Sa’Myah Smith
Mulkey has ridden her upperclassmen hard, with Reese and three seniors all averaging better than 23 minutes a game. Likewise, Flau’jae Johnson, the SEC Freshman of the Year, averaged 26.7 minutes a game; that doesn’t leave a lot of time for anyone else. Just one other LSU player, junior Kateri Poole, averaged more than 16 minutes.
Smith managed to get a SEC All-Freshman nod despite averaging just 15.8 minutes entering the tournament. Despite the limited time, the 6-2 Texan put up 5.1 points, 44 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game this season. Even when she’s not scoring, she can change the flow of the game: Just ask Texas A&M and Kentucky, who held her to two points combined in back to back games, only to surrender seven combined blocks. Or South Carolina, which saw her paint presence in real time last month.
Ryan Ford’s prediction
The Wolverines have thrived against smaller and less-talented teams this season, but against the cream of the crop, U-M’s offense has frequently gone cold. Expect the same against the host Tigers, with Reese dominating inside. The pick: LSU 74, U-M 52.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan women's basketball loses to LSU, 66-42: Game thread replay
