The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
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No. 2 Women's Basketball preview: LSU
11.21.2017 | Women's Basketball
The Longhorns and the Tigers meet at 5:30 p.m. CT Friday in Las Vegas.
No. 2/4 Texas Longhorns (3-0) vs. LSU Tigers (2-2)
Time: Friday, November 24, 2017 | 5:30 p.m. CT
TV: None (Live stream available)
Radio: 105.3 FM (David Garrett, Fran Harris)
Game Notes | Live Video | Live Stats | Live Audio | Tickets
The No. 2 Texas women's basketball team is on the road for the first time this season when it travels to Las Vegas, Nev., to participate in the South Point Shootout. The Longhorns open play facing LSU on Friday at 5:30 p.m. CT at the South Point Arena.
The Longhorns are 3-0 to start the season and are averaging 105 points per game through their opening three contests – victories against Stetson, McNeese State and UTSA. Texas leads the nation in scoring margin with a +50.7 edge against opponents.
Texas has brought down 50 or more rebounds in each of its three contests this season and has won the battle of the boards in 63 of its last 73 games. The Longhorns hold a rebound margin of +23.0 this year.
Senior guard Ariel Atkins leads the way for the Longhorns, averaging a squad-best 15.0 points per game, 3.7 assists per game, 3.7 steals per game and a 3.7 assist-to-turnover ratio. She currently ranks fourth in the nation in field-goal percentage at 78.3 percent (18-of-23) and she is perfect from beyond the arc this season at 5-for-5.
Senior guard Brooke McCarty follows with 13.7 points per game and a squad-best 5.3 assists per game. McCarty leads the Big 12 Conference in assist-to-turnover ratio at 4.0. McCarty is four points away from becoming just the 28th player in program history to reach 1,200 career points. She also needs just three more three-point field goals to move into No. 5 on the school's all-time career three-pointers made list at 190.
Junior guard Lashann Higgs adds 11.7 points per game, while sophomore guard/forward Jada Underwood adds 11.0 points per game.
"I'm really excited about the opportunity to test ourselves," Texas head coach Karen Aston said. "We've played three games and not been as tested as I would have liked to have been. Going out to Vegas will give this young group a chance to see what a real business trip looks like and also to play two really quality opponents. Regardless of what happens in Vegas, we need a challenge and we need someone to force us to execute some things offensively and force us to pay a little more attention to detail on defense."
Texas and LSU meet for the ninth time in the history of the two programs with the all-time series tied at 4-4. The two teams last met on March 27, 2004 in the NCAA Regional Semifinal. LSU won that game 71-55 in Seattle. In the most memorable of games in the series for the Longhorns, Texas defeated LSU 78-60 on April 1, 2003 in Palo Alto, Calif., to advance to the program's third all-time NCAA Final Four. The Longhorns are 144-72 (.667) all-time vs. teams in the current alignment of the Southeastern Conference.
LSU enters Friday's game with a 2-2 overall record. The Tigers are coming off a 65-50 win against in-state foe Nicholls State on Tuesday evening. Senior guard Raigyne Louis leads the way for LSU, averaging a squad-best 16.3 points per game and 7.0 rebounds per game with a team-high 19 assists on the year. Junior guard Chloe Jackson and sophomore forward Ayana Mitchell follow with 13.8 and 10.3 points per game, respectively, while Mitchell is tied with Louis for the team lead in rebounds per game at 7.0.
Following Friday's game against LSU, the Longhorns will face Washington at 3:15 p.m. CT on Saturday at the South Point Arena.
QUICK NOTES
- Texas women's basketball is in the midst of its 44th season of intercollegiate basketball.
- Texas is one of just eight programs in NCAA Division I women's basketball history to reach 1,000 all-time wins. Texas ranks fifth all-time in NCAA history with 1,040 all-time victories.
- The Longhorns have made 30 all-time NCAA Tournament appearances, which is fourth-most of any program in NCAA D-I Women's Basketball history.
- Texas head coach Karen Aston is 117-55 (.680) now in her sixth season at the helm of the Longhorns. She is the program's second-winningest coach in UT history behind Jody Conradt's 783 victories on the Forty Acres.
- The 2016-17 Longhorns tied the school record for most Big 12 wins in a season at 15. The 2002-03 and 2015-16 squads also posted 15 Big 12 victories.
- Texas has advanced to three consecutive NCAA Sweet 16s for the first time since the 2002, 2003 and 2004 campaigns.
- Over the past two seasons, Texas has earned 14 wins against foes ranked in the Associated Press Top-25.
- Senior guard Brooke McCarty has 187 career three-pointers made, which ranks sixth in school history in that category. She needs to make three more threes to surpass Heather Schreiber (189 from 2001-05) for fifth place all-time.
- McCarty ranks second in program history in three-point percentage at 40.6 percent (187-of-461) and is one of just four players in program history (Jamie Carey, Kat Nash and Vicki Hall are the others) to shoot better than 40 percent from beyond the arc for her career. Current UT assistant Jamie Carey is the school's all-time three-point field goal percentage leader at 41.8 percent.
- Senior guard Ariel Atkins now ranks 41st in program history with 1,006 career points.
- Atkins ranks fifth in school history in career free-throw percentage at 82.0 percent (201-of-245) and is one of just five players in program annals to shoot better than 82 percent from the line for her career.
- Atkins ranks fourth in the nation in field-goal percentage with a 78.3 percent clip (18-of-23). She is perfect from beyond the three-point arc this season at 5-for-5.
- Texas ranks 15th nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.69, while Brooke McCarty (4.00) and Ariel Atkins (3.67) are first and second, respectively, in the Big 12 Conference in assist-to-turnover ratio.
- The Longhorns are shooting 50.2 percent from the field this season, which ranks 17th in the nation.
- Texas is fifth nationally in rebound margin with a +23.0 edge on the glass. Dating back to the start of the 2015-16 season, the Longhorns have won the rebound battle in 63 of 73 total games.
