Kim Mulkey was asked about LSU’s defensive issues Monday night,
And the coach let the question linger, not long after Mississippi State upset her No. 9 Tigers 77-73, handing them a second consecutive loss.
“Who scored all the points for them tonight?” Mulkey asked. “What positions?”
The answer: Mississippi State’s guards. The trio of Darrione Rogers, Miracle Sheppard and Jerkaila Jordan, a New Orleans native, combined to score 55 points against LSU. Rogers and Jordan punished the Tigers from beyond the 3-point arc, where the Bulldogs shot 9 of 17, outscoring LSU by 18 points.
Mulkey said she couldn’t explain away LSU’s defensive problems by singling out one area of concern. But on Monday night, chief among the Tigers’ issues in their fourth loss, she suggested, was their failure to defend the perimeter.
LSU guard Mikaylah Williams (12) sits on the bench between the third and fourth periods of the game against Arkansas on Sunday, January 21, 2024 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
So, Mulkey directed the blame to her backcourt’s collective inexperience, either in age or in the LSU system. Mikaylah Williams is a freshman. Flau’jae Johnson is a sophomore. And Hailey Van Lith is a transfer, given the unenviable task of adapting to a new position late in her career.
“When you don’t have experience on the floor, you lack leadership,” Mulkey said, “and if you lack leadership, you tend to lack a little bit of chemistry when things get tough. And I think it’s more of that than anything on the defensive end.”
At two different points in the fourth quarter, LSU pulled within five points of Mississippi State. But each time, Rogers countered with a back-breaking 3-pointer, one that built the Bulldog lead back up to nine and another that brought it back up to six.
To make the first, Rogers pump-faked Johnson into the air on the right wing, took one dribble and hopped behind the arc, where she buried the 3, her third of the game.
Johnson locked her eyes onto Jordan, who was dribbling at the top of the key. When the ball was swung to Rogers, it took Johnson just a second too long to realize that she had relocated from the corner to the wing. The sophomore LSU guard scrambled to close out on the shot, leaving her vulnerable to a pump fake.
“Everybody starts getting focused on their man or they ball watch,” Mulkey said, “so it’s a little bit of everything. I don’t think it’s just one thing on the defensive end. We don’t have the fleet-of-foot guards out there that can make up things when they get beat off the dribble, so we gotta do a better job of helping each other.”
Before Rogers sunk the dagger 3, she caught Williams chasing a loose ball that forward Jessika Carter recovered and kicked out to the right corner, where Rogers found space to shoot.
In the second half, Mississippi State shot 6 of 10 from 3-point range. LSU, on the other hand, shot just 1 of 7 on its second-half long-range looks. Williams took four of those shots, including one that sailed past the rim and out of bounds on the possession after Rogers nailed her last 3-pointer.
The mistakes that felled the Tigers Monday night were similar to the ones they made in the waning minutes of their loss to South Carolina, who buried them with a pair of late 3s. On each possession, the Gamecocks caught Williams out of position, with her eyes on the ball instead of the player she was assigned to guard.
The late-game lapses, which occurred on both ends of the floor, are now partially responsible for back-to-back losses, LSU’s first since Mulkey’s first season at the helm.
“I’m not one to make excuses,” Mulkey said, “but sometimes I need to step back and go, that’s a freshman out there. That’s a sophomore out there. That’s a new player out there. And I think everybody just gets caught up into their rankings or gets caught up into how great they are. At the end of the day, experience matters.
