After two months of non-conference play and endless blowouts, conference play kicked off last night in women’s college basketball with a flurry of high-powered matchups. From conference to conference, the night of hoops certainly delivered to jumpstart the New Year. Let’s rehash two of the most anticipated matchups:
After a tightly contested first half at 40-36 in favor of South Carolina, the Gamecocks appeared to have woken up after halftime, outscoring Alabama 40-23 in the second half without senior guard Ta’Niya Latson. Homegrown star Joyce Edwards finished with a season-high 25 points on 11-for-18 shooting from the field.
Joyce Edwards cooking pic.twitter.com/eW2lVtXaT5
— Shabazz 💫 (@ShowCaseShabazz) January 1, 2026
Senior guard Raven Johnson is a star in her own right and is quietly proving to be one of the best guards and overall defenders in the upcoming WNBA Draft. Johnson had 17 points on an uber-efficient 7-for-10 shooting, with four rebounds and five assists and zero turnovers in 32 minutes of play.
The game was played in Baton Rouge, but the cheers of Wildcat fans in attendance and thousands more back in Lexington could be heard from over 800 miles away. With less than a second left in the fourth quarter, senior guard Tonie Morgan connected on her third three-pointer of the game as Kentucky upset top-five LSU on the road to open SEC play.
KENTUCKY. WILDCATS. 🚨
No. 11 Kentucky goes into Baton Rouge and hands No. 5 LSU its first loss of the season 😲 pic.twitter.com/Mq61bxHE3m
— espnW (@espnW) January 2, 2026
Entering last night’s matchup, Morgan was shooting 33 percent from deep, going 8-for-24 in her previous six games. The Georgia Tech transfer scored a season-high 24 points while shooting 7-for-10 from the field and collecting 12 assists.
Senior wing Teonni Key notched her third double-double of the season, scoring 17 points and corralling a career-high 16 rebounds. Kentucky head coach Kenny Brooks went eight deep and had four players with at least 15 points.
Four LSU starters finished in double figures, but a lackluster contest on the left wing on the most important possession rendered the performances futile. There were several areas where Kentucky showed up, and the Tigers simply didn’t. The biggest concern was the Wildcats’ dominance on the offensive glass. Kentucky outrebounded LSU 17-to-4 in that department. Like many parts of the game, it takes a team effort, but Key was arguably the largest proponent, grabbing nine offensive rebounds alone. A 19-12 advantage in assists only helped matters for Big Blue.
In back-to-back seasons, the Tigers have lost key defensive stalwarts in the frontcourt to the WNBA in Angel Reese and Aneesah Morrow. It’s not an excuse for subpar play, but it does point to a lack of preparation on the part of its coaching staff. LSU led for 78 percent of the game, but when it came to winning time, it just didn’t matter.
Under head coach Kim Mulkey, LSU has failed to beat an SEC team ranked in the AP’s top 12, according to LSU Tigers reporter Reed Darcy. After the loss to Kentucky on New Year’s Day, the Tigers are now 0-8. That includes five losses to the South Carolina Gamecocks and two at the hands of the Texas Longhorns. It’s a tad soon to ring the alarms because LSU has the talent to be one of the last teams standing in March, but opening conference play with a loss like this makes it a tad bit tougher.
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Born and raised in Chicago, Christan Braswell is a women’s sports journalist with a focus on the WNBA and women’s college basketball. He’s an avid fan of elevator screens and stuffed-crust pizza. Outside of sports, he’s an avid cook and lover of the great outdoors.
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