Flau'jae Johnson gives honest assessment of latest LSU women's basketball performance

Flau'jae Johnson and LSU improved to 19-0 on Monday night after a surprisingly nervy 83-77 win over 14-4 Vanderbilt .

The Tigers struggled to pull away from their SEC opponents - the two teams were level at 21-21 after the first quarter and 37-37 at halftime.

"We should have started better today, for sure," Johnson admitted in an honest postgame assessment.

"But this is the SEC.

Every game is gonna be a grind, but we made the game harder than it had to be." The 2024 Second-team All-SEC selection scored 25 on 10-21 shooting in her 38 minutes as head coach Kim Mulkey road her star players to the bone.

"Were playing to win," LSU's longtime head coach said.

"Im not worried about 10 games down the road.

Were in a dogfight out there.

Hannah Hidalgo breaks silence after reaching major milestone in Notre Dame victory Paige Bueckers shows true colors as Geno Auriemma bans injured star from practice On the season, Johnson is averaging 19.7 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 2.8 assists (all personal bests) in 31.2 minutes a contest for the undefeated Tigers.

As a freshman in 2022-23, she earned the SEC Freshman of the Year award en route to helping LSU win the NCAA Championship (with help from star Angel Reese).

After earning Second-team All-SEC honors last season, Johnson can now be comfortably considered a candidate for National Player of the Year and a spot on the First-team All-American squad.

Johnson wasn't the only LSU star to play well on Monday: Aneesah Morrow played all 40 minutes, scoring 23 points on 10-19 shooting while grabbing 15 rebounds.

Her stats made her the eighth player in the history of women's college basketball with 2,500 points and 1,500 rebounds.

Vanderbilt top-scorer Khamil Pierre led the way for her team with 28 points on 12 of 24 points.

Mulkey was effusive in her praise of her opponents.

I want to give them credit, theyre coming off of two losses," she said.

"Sometimes you can fold or sometimes you can you can bow your neck and I just thought they bowed their neck.

Mulkey also referenced how her team's sloppy play led to the game being so close.

"It was a dogfight," she continued.

"What made it a dogfight? Well, it was putting them at the foul line 22 times and doing it early, missing shots from us." "But if you look at each quarter, we did not shoot the ball bad each quarter.

We shot the ball significantly more than they did.

They just had efficient offense.".

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