Women’s Basketball Upsets No. 14 Iowa State

The Kim Mulkey era at LSU passed another early milestone as the Tigers upset the No. 14 Iowa State Cyclones 69-60 Thursday night inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

Thursday’s win was the first victory over a ranked opponent for LSU under Mulkey; and considering the trajectory she has the Tigers on, it certainly won’t be the last.

LSU led for essentially the entire game. Iowa State’s biggest lead was 1 (one) point and that lasted for all of 58 seconds, other than that it was all LSU. It was LSU’s first win over a ranked non-conference opponent since the Tigers beat West Virginia in the second round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament.

Fifth-year senior Alexis Morris had the game of her collegiate career, scoring a career-best 25 points and was a scorching 5-7 from three. Morris played for Mulkey at Baylor in the 2017-2018 season and has since bounced around from Rutgers to Texas A&M to now LSU and Thursday night donning the purple and gold she shined like never before.

Fellow fifth-year senior Khayla Pointer was excellent as usual, scoring 20 points and handing out 7 assists; and senior Ryann Payne was a menace on both ends of the court, scoring 9 points and recording 5 steals in 24 minutes off the bench. Payne’s 9 points spearheaded a 16-point effort by the LSU bench, while Iowa State only got 4 points from its bench.

The women’s team has now won five in a row and own a 6-1 record. For reasons unbeknownst to me the women’s team has not been receiving any votes from the AP since the preseason poll, hopefully Thursday’s win vaults the Tigers into next week’s poll.

Mulkey’s team, like Will Wade’s squad, will have the next week and a half or so off as end of semester exams are about to begin. The next time we’ll see the women’s basketball team will be on Sunday, December 12 at 1:00 P.M. against Texas Southern.