Familiar foes clash again. Can the LSU Tigers replicate their early-season dominance against a vastly improved Duke Blue Devils squad seeking revenge in a late March Madness thriller?
The LSU Tigers cruised through their first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, but the difficulty is about to kick up to a brand new level as their next matchup comes against the Duke Blue Devils.
With the second round of March Madness wrapping up on Monday night, the Tigers now know that they will face the Blue Devils late on Friday at 9 pm CT. It'll be as late as LSU has started a game all season long.
Interestingly enough, given how everyone viewed the ease of the Tigers' out-of-conference schedule this year, these two teams have already faced off. LSU beat Duke handily by a score of 93-77 back in early December.
In that game, the Tigers dominated the paint, which many would consider their weakness. LSU outrebounded the Blue Devils 34 to 25 and outscored them in the paint 52-36. That will be their key to victory once again.
Six different Tiger players ended with double-digit points. Duke had no answer for Grace Knox, Flau'jae Johnson and Amiya Joyner, as all three turned over extremely efficient games.
On the flip side, the Blue Devils offense also made its mark on the vaunted LSU defense. They had six players reach double digits. Ashlon Jackson shot 4-of-10 from deep, just one less than the Tigers had as a team.
As Duke looks to get their revenge for that early-season matchup, they will likely look to do a lot of the same things they did in that one, but hope for more stops.
This is not the same Blue Devils team that took the court in that game, though. They had gone 3-5 at that point in the year. After falling to LSU, Duke lost just two more games the entire season. They beat the Louisville Cardinals in overtime in the ACC Championship, the second time they beat them that season. They also had top-25 wins over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and North Carolina Tar Heels.
The Tigers cannot afford to look at this team as weak because the Blue Devils are extremely battle-tested. Pretty much as much as a non-SEC team can be.
Duke's leader is, without a doubt, sophomore forward Toby Fournier. Fournier is averaging 17.4 points, 8.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists on 53.1/34.6/56.6 shooting splits. She had just three boards the last time these teams met, which is tied for the worst of her season. She had more games in double-digits than she did with five or under, so that's going to be an area of focus for her.