The last five nonconference schedules the LSU women’s basketball team has played have had the same feel. Coach Kim Mulkey prefers to keep them light.
In her eyes, the rewards of playing high-profile matchups in November and December don’t outweigh the risks. Mulkey prefers to let the Tigers beat up overmatched mid-major opponents instead, building confidence they can use for the games that matter most.
“This is like practice,” Mulkey said Dec. 16 after a 58-point win over Morgan State, “and you’re going to play (SEC) teams that are just, every night in and night out, so good.”
The No. 5 Tigers (13-0) soon will encounter the teams that Mulkey referred to that day. But first, they’ll host one more nonconference tune-up at 3 p.m. Sunday against Alabama State (SEC Network), a game they can use to put an exclamation point on the Mulkey era’s most dominant string of matchups to date.
LSU always rolls through its nonconference slate — which is ranked 291st in the country this year, per WarrenNolan.com. The difference this season is that the Tigers are scoring at a higher clip, shooting a better percentage and winning by larger margins than they have before under Mulkey.
LSU leads the nation in points per game (107.9), average margin of victory (54.4), field-goal percentage (55%) and offensive rebounding rate (56%). Only one Division I team is grabbing more boards per contest than the Tigers (51.1), who also rank fourth nationally in 3-point percentage (40%) and fifth in steals per game (15.5).
The per-possession numbers look even more impressive.
LSU, according to Her Hoop Stats, is leading the country in both points scored per 100 possessions (132.5) and points allowed per 100 possessions (67). That 65.5-point differential also leads the nation by more than 10 points, and it’s by far the best mark of the Mulkey era.
The Tigers posted their next-best numbers in 2022. That year, the LSU team that eventually won the national title outscored its nonconference competition by 58.8 points per 100 possessions.
These Tigers have managed to score even more efficiently — a fact reflected in the number of 100-point outings they’ve posted so far.
In Mulkey’s first four years, LSU didn’t hit the century mark more than seven times in one season. The 2025-26 Tigers have scored 100 points in 10 of 13 games. No other Division I team has more than six such showings.
Seven contributors have a double-digit scoring average, including all three of LSU’s transfers and two of its five freshmen — forwards Grace Knox and ZaKiyah Johnson.
“I didn’t expect us to click as quickly as we did,” Knox said, “but I feel like once we kind of saw each other’s personalities off the court, and we were able to also play together on the court, it was kind of just like a perfect gel for us.”
LSU still has room to improve in one key area. Mulkey has been stressing the need for the Tigers to play better defense ever since they allowed Duke to score 77 points on 50% shooting in the ACC/SEC challenge Dec. 4.
But LSU is still, statistically, off to its best defensive start of the last five seasons — a fact that bodes well for its chances of returning to the Final Four.
“I think we’re ready,” Johnson said, “and we got a lot more work to do. Every day we have work to do, needing improvement, but it’s gonna be fun, and we’ll come ready for the challenge.”
