Texas Southern looked frisky. It trailed the LSU women’s basketball team by 12 points, but it was hitting enough 3-pointers and grabbing enough offensive boards to give coach Kim Mulkey’s Tigers a small challenge.
Then things flipped. Quickly.
LSU led Texas Southern 25-13 at the end of the first quarter of the game the two teams played Thursday in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
By the end of the fourth, the score was 131-22.
That’s right: The No. 9 Tigers (2-0) outscored their second mid-major opponent of the new season 106-9 across the second, third and fourth quarters of the Thursday evening matchup, which was enough to break an NCAA record for margin of victory in a game between two Division I teams.
The NCAA record that Mulkey’s new LSU team broke on Monday was one that her Baylor program set when it beat Winthrop 140-32 in 2016.
The Tigers’ win on Thursday was also by a wide enough margin to break the program record they set when they beat Southeastern Louisiana 129-35 in their opener on Monday.
“Honestly this is the best team I’ve ever played on,” point guard Jada Williams said, “so I’m just out here having the time of my life.”
Texas Southern, a remade program picked to finish 10th in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, hit a 3-pointer with 24 seconds left in the first quarter.
Its next points didn’t come until the 6:15 mark of the third, when guard Jayla Cornelius hit her second 3 of the night. That bucket represented Texas Southern’s only points of the third frame — and one of the three shots it made after the first quarter.
LSU’s barrage, which started with a 40-0 second-quarter run, began on the defensive end of the floor. The Tigers forced Texas Southern into nine of its 38 turnovers in that frame alone, then used those opportunities to find an offensive groove. LSU shot 15-of-20 from the field in the second and 5-of-6 from 3-point range. It assisted on 12 of those 15 makes.
Jada Williams, the Iowa State transfer who finished with 18 points, seven assists and two steals, scored 15 points in the second after hitting all three of her 3-point tries.
LSU’s other leading scorers were its other four starters. Mikaylah Williams put up 20 points, six rebounds and five assists, while MiLaysia Fulwiley tallied 16 points, six assists, four blocks and five steals. Grace Knox chipped in 15 points and eight rebounds, and ZaKiyah Johnson sprinkled in 17 points and eight boards.
Freshman center Anna Minaeva scored 11 points in the fourth quarter to finish with a game-high 21. She also grabbed seven rebounds and assisted on three makes.
Texas Southern shot only 15% from the field, and its 19 points were the fewest LSU has allowed in the Mulkey era. The Tigers also set a program record for field goal makes (53), while posting the second-most points in program history and assisting the second-most shots (36). They’ve now hit the century mark in each of their first two games.
All five of LSU’s starters played at least 20 minutes. Mulkey even subbed them back into the game late in the fourth quarter.
“We just some hoopers,” Williams said. “Everybody gonna hoop. Every game it’s gonna be somebody else. I think we just do a really good job of running and sharing the ball. We’re a very unselfish team, and I think you can see that. Since we’ve got her in June, we’ve all just gelled really well.”
Last season, LSU scored at least 100 points in each of its first eight contests — an NCAA record.
LSU honored Angel Reese at halftime of Thursday’s game, five days after the program great ended her third season in the WNBA with a loss in Game 7 of the league finals.
Reese, the star of the Tigers’ 2023 title run, was named WNBA Defensive Player of the Year this past season, her first with the Atlanta Dream. She walked onto the PMAC floor alongside Mulkey on Thursday and watched the action unfold from a courtside seat next to the LSU bench.
The Tigers will next face McNeese State on Tuesday at home.
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