Auburn women’s basketball took down No. 7 LSU 67-62 on Sunday night, ending the Tiger’s 16 game winning streak. It was LSU’s second loss this season after a season-opening loss to Colorado.
The defending national champions entered the game with the nation’s best scoring offense, but Auburn held their opponents to a season low in points.
Auburn forced 15 turnovers, including one from JaMya Mingo-Young that sealed the game as she stripped LSU’s Angel Reese.
“That’s what we’ve been working on, just when she gets the ball just crowd her,” Mingo-Young told ESPN postgame. “I didn’t do it the whole game. But I just knew she couldn’t see me when she spins, so I went and got the ball.”
“This one was on me,” Reese wrote on social media. “We good! Geaux Tigers!”
Auburn coach Johnnie Harris said that the team had been working on that exact play all week.
“We guarded that play all week,” Harris said. “We knew, from the way [Reese] caught the ball, what she was going to do. We knew that she was going to drive it in that situation. … Once she put it down, we knew she was going to score. She wasn’t going to pass it.”
The win was Auburn’s first over a top-10 opponent since beating No. 4 Tennessee on Jan. 27, 2022. It also was the largest crowd the Tigers had ever hosted in the history of their women’s basketball program, with 7,720 people showing up.
“Honestly, I don’t know if they were there for us, or if they were there just to see LSU,” Honesty Scott-Grayson, who led the team with 21 points, said. “But we knew we had to go out there and put on a show, either way. We weren’t backing down from [LSU] just because of the name.”
To LSU coach Kim Mulkey, the outcome of the game was simple.
“We knew Auburn would get in lanes and pressure you and make it hard to complete a pass,” Mulkey said. “Energy and enthusiasm, [Auburn] just came at us. … Their effort was better than our effort.”
Elsewhere, No. 9 USC upended No. 2 UCLA’s perfect season behind a JuJu Watkins double-double. The loss leaves South Carolina as the nation’s only undefeated team left.