Women’s basketball AP poll: 3 things we learned from Feast Week

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Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Hannah Hidalgo looks on with coach Niele Ivey during a women’s college basketball game on Nov. 23. (Brian Rothmuller/Getty Images)

Another week, another top-five team stumbles. Notre Dame, previously No. 3 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll after a major win over USC, took a tumble with back-to-back losses in their Feast Week tournament showing. The only other program in the top 10 to lose last week was Oklahoma in a thrilling overtime battle against top-15 Duke.

In terms of teams rising, South Carolina bounced back from its worst loss since 2019 with a pure demolition of Iowa State, 76-36, to put shine back in voters’ eyes. And TCU secured its signature win against the Fighting Irish, though given Notre Dame’s ensuing work, that now brings a few questions.

Here are three things we learned (or didn’t learn) from a cranberry jam-packed week of games.

LSU’s success runs through Flau’jae Johnson

LSU was lucky to avoid an upset at the hands of Washington in the Baha Mar Hoops first round.

“I don’t know how we won that game, because Washington really, really played good,” LSU head coach Kim Mulkey said on the broadcast, a claim repeated multiple times last week.

It’s because LSU goes as Flau’jae Johnson goes, and Johnson willed her team to stay in it, slowly chipping away at a seven-point deficit in the final three minutes. She scored or assisted on seven points, including an aggressive take through the defense to cut the deficit to one, and chased down an errant ball to avoid a backcourt violation on the final possession. Kailyn Gilbert found the ball in the scramble, scored the winning basket and secured a steal on the ensuing play to win.

Johnson, who scored 19 points despite a rough shooting day for LSU collectively, is averaging a career-high 22.3 points (10th in Division I) while shooting 54.7%, 43.2% from 3 and 85.4% from the free throw line. It’s a small sample size, merely nine games into the season and without quality…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/womens-basketball-ap-poll-3-things-we-learned-from-feast-week-171326090.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-12-02 17:13:00

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