BATON ROUGE – LSU women’s basketball has nearly completed the non-conference portion of its 2023-24 schedule as after Sunday’s 85-57 win over Louisiana, only three games remain.
The No. 4 Tigers (12-0) have played 12 games — won them all. But to Kim Mulkey and the coaching staff, there’s still one big component missing from the team. And there’s growing concern that it may not find it before Southeastern Conference play arrives next month.
“I think we have a void at leadership,” LSU associated head coach Bob Starkey told reporters following LSU’s win over UL. Mulkey was unable to participate in postgame as she was sick. “When you do that, that can affect your team chemistry. We have certain players that want to lead at certain times and that’s another area where we’re not consistent.”
With Flau’jae Johnson, Aneesh Morrow and Mikaylah Williams back from last season to give LSU one of the main team nucleus’ in women’s basketball, the assumption has been the star trio would guide this team. And while there’s been moments from each over the course of the first dozen games, in the huddles and timeouts when a voice needs to be heard, no one yet has stepped into that role for the Tigers.
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How that void in leadership shows itself is the type of performances like LSU had against Louisiana. It had 17 first-half turnovers. The team was played solid defense with poor offense in the first half only to flip the script and play well offensively but be leaky on defense in the second half.
Starkey lauded the play of junior Jersey Wolfenbarger, who is new to the team this year after transferring in from Arkansas. She paced the team with 18 points and 15 rebounds, both career highs, against the Ragin’ Cajuns but she said she was the only player that was consistent throughout the whole game.
“It’s hard to be proud for 15 to 20 minutes of effort, of execution. The standard and goals here are different. We’re looking for 40 minutes of quality basketball and we haven’t found that yet, Starkey said. “It’s a little bit concerning.
“I think that’s a little bit of a character test, us having the understanding that if we want to accomplish the things we say we want to accomplish, we’ve got to develop a level of toughness where we can play for longer periods of time. We can’t be a team that plays well defensively but not offensively, comes back and plays well offensively but not defensively.”
When SEC play starts at the beginning of January, Starkey said LSU will be pushed. And if the inconsistencies in leadership and play aren’t remedied or close to it, conference games will be eye-openers.
Time is running out for LSU to get things fixed.
“Consistency and mental toughness. You can’t have lulls. You’ve got to be able to take care of the basketball for 40 minutes, you can’t have defensive breakdowns. You have to get quality shots. The other thing we’re not doing well is reversing the basketball, making them guard us,” Starkey said. “We’re taking quick shots, we’re trying to hurry up and win the game. We’ve got a lot of things to clean up in a short amount of time if we want to have the type of SEC season that we’re capable of having.
“We’ve got to do some of things well consistently. You go back to Stanford: we had some really good moments to get back into that game. But we need a lot more of them.”
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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Does LSU women’s basketball lack leadership on court? Can it be fixed?
