Hawaii hangs with LSU before being outclassed in NCAA Tournament loss

BATON ROUGE, La. >> Hawaii found itself in a familiar place when it started the fourth quarter of its first-round NCAA Tournament game at LSU.

Similar to its predicament in the fourth quarter of the Big West Tournament championship game, the Rainbow Wahine faced a double-digit deficit. This time it was in the opening round of the NCAA’s Greenville 2 regional and, with third-seeded LSU as the opponent, the outcome was different.

LSU All-America post player Angel Reese posted her 29th double-double of the season, and LSU surged in the fourth quarter for a 73-50 win over Hawaii at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the LSU campus.

Kallin Spiller scored the first basket of the fourth quarter to make it 48-35, but LSU (29-2) responded with a 10-0 run to take a 58-35 lead with 7:24 to play. The Rainbow Wahine were unable to get closer than 18 points the rest of the way.

Reese finished with 34 points and 15 rebounds, and Flau’jae Johnson added 10 for the winners..

“You have to pick your poison with a team as talented as LSU,” Hawaii coach Laura Beeman said. “We knew we weren’t going to stop Reese. We just had to do as good a job on her as we could on the boards. We had to make her touches be outside the boards as much as possible and make her work a little bit.”

Hawai (18-15), which came into the game as a heavy underdog, kept things interesting until the fourth quarter. Ultimately, too many turnovers and not enough open looks at the basket were its undoing.

LSU forced Hawaii into three shot-clock violations, but also had the Wahine taking forced shots late in possessions. The Tigers long, athletic defense forced 21 turnovers and made Wahine inside players Spiller and Daejah Phillips work for everything.

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Spiller and Phillips each finished with 13 points, while leading scorer Lily Wahinekapu was held to 11 points. Imani Perez pulled down a team-high nine rebounds

“I personally feel like me and my teammates left it all on the court,” Spiller said. “There (were) definitely some shots we wish would have fallen or some defensive stops we could have gotten, but hats off to LSU. It’s a great program that’s going to make a deep run in this tournament and I’m really proud of what our team was able to show today.”

Hawaii lost the rebounding battle 40-33 but pulled down 13 offensive boards. The Wahine were only able to turn those second chances into eight points.

“Reese is going to get what she gets,” Beeman said. “She’s going to go No. 1 or No. 2 in the WNBA (Draft). We don’t have a pro on our team right now.”

LSU controlled the paint on both ends of the floor in the first half. Reese scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds. The Tigers also blocked seven shots in the first two quarters.

“I thought we did a pretty good job on the boards. Turnovers and the amount of points they were able to score off of turnovers got us,” Beeman said. “I think what it came down to was when big shots had to be made, they made big shots and we missed shots when we had wide-open looks. To beat a team the quality of LSU you have to hit wide-open shots, and we just didn’t do that.”

Hawaii opened the game with confidence. The Wahine forced a turnover, and Wahinekapu hit a 3-pointer from the left wing for a 3-0 lead. LSU forced three turnovers and scored two baskets, but Wahinekapu’s scoring drive gave Hawaii a 5-4 lead.

LSU went on to take an 18-7 lead after one quarter.

In the second quarter, LaDazhia Williams’ three-point play gave LSU a 23-11 lead, but Hawaii continued to show the fight that carried it to the Big West Tournament championship. The Wahine twice cut LSU’s lead to eight points, and then sliced it to seven points on Meilani McBee’s 3-pointer with three minutes to go in the half.

Hawaii missed three 3-pointers in the closing minutes, and LSU scored the last four points to take a 35-22 lead into halftime.

The Wahine went 7-for-32 from 3-point range, but Wahinekapu finished just 1-for-7 and Phillips 0-for-3. Spiller was 3-for-7. LSU was 1-for-14 from 3, but the Tigers leaned on Reese on the inside, where she finished 13-for-20.

LSU advances to take on sixth-seeded Michigan, which defeated No. 11 UNLV 71-59 on Friday. The Tigers will have at least one more person rooting them on in Spiller.

“I think it’s really clear (LSU) has great guards, they have great posts — they have a full team and are able to do everything,” Spiller said. “(LSU coach Kim) Mulkey has done a great job with them. It’s pretty clear that they’re going to make a deep run and, after playing them, I’m rooting for them.”