LSU women’s basketball is getting ready to enter the NCAA Tournament, coming off one of its best regular seasons in school history.
LSU tied its program best regular season record this year, but that would feel all for nothing if it’s not followed up by postseason success. That was already the case for LSU in the SEC Tournament.
Looking back at LSU’s best tournament finishes, there are similarities to this season.
The last time the Tigers made the Final Four was 2008. That team dominated the SEC during the regular season, finishing 14-0 in conference play. However, LSU fell in the SEC Tournament to Tennessee, the same team it lost to this season.
LSU entered the NCAA Tournament that year as a No. 2 seed, narrowly missing out on being a one-seed after losing in the SEC Tournament.
That’s a fate LSU looks to have suffered this year as well. The Tigers were on the fringes of being a No. 1 seed for much of the latter half of the season, but the loss to Tennessee all but ended that possibility.
This year, LSU is currently projected as a three-seed, still allowing it to host its first two games. That was the situation LSU was in last season, where it narrowly avoided an upset versus Jackson State in the first round before losing to Ohio State in the Round of 32.
Despite only being a year removed, LSU has almost completely reshaped its roster since last year. The Tigers only returned one real key player from that run, LSU’s current second-leading scorer Alexis Morris.
With that said, last year doesn’t necessarily serve as a good predictive measure for this year’s team. However, it’s possible that LSU will be faced with similar matchups to last year to start the tournament.
When looking at LSU’s Final Four teams, all of which come between 2004 and 2008, there are a couple key similarities in the makeup of the teams.
In that time where LSU made it to the Final Four in five straight seasons, each of those teams featured either Sylvia Fowles or Seimone Augustus, true superstars who could will their teams to big wins.
This year’s LSU team features superstar Angel Reese who currently averages 23.4 points per game and 15.5 rebounds per game. Both of those numbers are more points and rebounds than either Augustus or Fowles averaged over the course of one season.
That doesn’t automatically mean that Reese is a better player than either of the two, but her production is that of an Augustus or Fowles-level player. The big difference, though, is that unlike LSU in 2005 and 2006, it doesn’t have two players of that caliber like those teams did.
The aforementioned Morris is LSU’s next most productive player after Reese, averaging 15.1 points, 4.2 assists and three rebounds per game. Individual star quality isn’t the only factor in making a deep tournament run, but with LSU, that’s been the case in all five of its Final Four runs.
When looking at the personnel and individual production, the 2008 team once again stands out as the most similar of the Final Four teams to this year.
In 2008, Augustus was gone, but Fowles was in her senior season and averaged 17.4 points per game and 10.3 rebounds per game. She was LSU’s leading producer, and played a similar style to how Reese plays for LSU now.
When looking at production outside of Fowles, the similarities continue. Quianna Chaney was LSU’s second leading scorer that season, and put up similar numbers to Morris, averaging 14.4 points, 3.3 assists and 2.6 rebounds per game.
One key difference, though, was the strength of schedule of the 2008 team compared to this year. LSU has received its fair share of criticism this season for its weak nonconference schedule. The lack of quality wins is also a major reason why LSU is only projected as a No. 3 seed.
In 2008, LSU played three top 10 ranked teams during nonconference play while also securing a win over then No. 1 Tennessee in conference play.
Though that schedule resulted in a couple more losses for the Tigers, it improved their resume and helped prepare them for big games in the postseason.
That experience is something LSU lacks this season, as the Tigers have only played two ranked teams all year, and one of those games was a 24-point loss to No. 1 South Carolina.
The NCAA Tournament is impossible to predict, the similarities between this year’s team and other successful LSU teams are there. After a semifinal exit in the SEC Tournament, the Tigers now await their fate as the 2023 NCAA Tournament bracket will be announced at 7 p.m. Sunday on ESPN.
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