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Now that the women’s basketball regular season has concluded and all eyes shift toward Nashville for the SEC Tournament (running the 3-6) the conference is rolling out end of season accolades and two Tigers were honored by the league.
Khayla Pointer was named first-team All-SEC while Alexis Morris was voted to the second team.
Pointer has done it all for LSU, averaging 18.7 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 5.1 assists. She has recorded a pair of triple-doubles and also leads the SEC, and second in the entire nation, in minutes played with 36.8 It’s Pointer’s third selection to an All-SEC team and her second straight first-team.
Morris has been a revelation in her first year donning the purple and gold. Morris averaged 15 points for the season but upped that to 17 in conference play. Morris won’t be available for the SEC Tournament with an MCL sprain but LSU head coach Kim Mulkey said Morris could play if it were an NCAA Tournament game.
LSU’s enters the SEC Tournament as the No. 2 seed and will play on Friday, March 3, against the winner of Kentucky-Mississippi State. The Tigers beat Kentucky 78-69 in Baton Rouge back on January 30 and beat Mississippi State on February 17 in Starkville 71-59.
While LSU had two names recognized by the SEC, the biggest surprise is who wasn’t honored by the league. Kim Mulkey, incredibly, was not voted the SEC’s coach of the year. That honor instead went to South Carolina’s Dawn Staley.
Carolina is certainly the team to beat in both the SEC and NCAA Tournament. The Gamecocks are 27-1 and the unanimous No. 1 team in the nation and have been for several weeks now. But Kim Mulkey took over a team that was 9-13 last season and turned them into 25-4 practically overnight. South Carolina was the preseason favorite to win the SEC and finished atop the standings; LSU, on the other hand, was picked eighth in the conference and finished second and are now ranked No. 6 in the nation in both the AP and Coaches’ Poll. Sure we’re an LSU website but even the most objective person has to be more impressed with what Mulkey’s done in her first year compared to Staley maintaining the well oiled machine, right?
Here’s hoping Mulkey can start getting some payback with a tournament championship win over Staley on Sunday.