BATON ROUGE, La. — Flau’Jae Johnson scored 22 points, Aneesah Morrow had 12 points and 12 rebounds, and LSU overwhelmed San Diego State 103-48 on Saturday night in the opening round of the women’s NCAA Tournament.
Morrow increased her nation-leading double-double tally to 28 in her first game since hurting her left foot during a March 8 loss to Texas in the Southeastern Conference tournament.
Johnson, who missed that tournament with a right shin injury, wore a compression sleeve over her lower leg but exhibited the explosiveness, shooting touch and all-around panache that has made her one of the most popular players in college basketball.
“I told myself when I came back that I wanted to be the energy for the team,” Johnson said. “I know that’s what we needed.”
Mikaylah Williams added 13 points for LSU (29-5), the third seed in the Spokane 1 Region that now moves on to host No. 6 seed Florida State on Monday night. Along the way, Tigers coach Kim Mulkey improved to 22-1 in NCAA tournament openers.
“I think your word — unselfish — is pretty spot-on,” Mulkey said of her team’s effort in responding to a question in her postgame media availability. “And I said that to them in a timeout. We had a lot of ball reversal, we shared the…
