It also teed up Morrow to soon reach a pair of significant milestones.
The LSU senior needs only 12 more rebounds to become just the eighth NCAA Division I player to join the 2,500-point, 1,500-rebound club, and she needs only three more double-doubles to move into second place on the all-time double-double leaderboard.
Morrow could hit the first of those marks as soon as Monday, when the No. 5 Tigers (18-0) host Vanderbilt at 6 p.m. on the SEC Network.
“Six-foot kid, battling in there,” coach Kim Mulkey said, “guarding bigger, stronger, taller players. From the get-go, she just does what she does.”
On Thursday, LSU chose to battle Tennessee’s pace-and-space offense with a smaller lineup. That group — which stationed Morrow alongside guards Shayeann Day-Wilson, Kailyn Gilbert, Flau’jae Johnson and Mikaylah Williams — outscored Tennessee by 13 points in the 19 minutes it saw the floor. No other combination of Tigers played more than five minutes or outscored the No. 15 Lady Vols by more than four points.
Morrow’s work on the glass helped LSU earn some key advantages over Tennessee.
Her 13 defensive rebounds set up the Tigers’ transition offense, which outscored the Lady Vols 24-15 in fast-break points, and her eight offensive rebounds helped LSU control the paint. By the end of the night, it had outscored Tennessee 24-14 in second-chance points and 60-30 in paint points — two areas of offense that allowed it to negate the 30-point edge that the Lady Vols earned from beyond the 3-point arc.
Against Tennessee, Morrow finished with at least 20 points and 20 rebounds for the second time this season and the fourth time in her career. No other Division I player has posted more than one such outing this season, and no other active player has had more than two such performances in her career.
Morrow has never converted her field goals at a higher percentage (54%) or grabbed more rebounds per game (14.4) than she has through the first 18 games of this season.
If she maintains that rebounding average, and if LSU plays two postseason games, then she’ll finish her four-year career with more than 1,700 career rebounds — at least the fourth-most in Division I history. Only two NCAA Division I players — Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris and Drake’s Wanda Ford — have finished their career with more than 2,500 points and 1,700 rebounds. Morrow could be the third.
“Her work ethic is second-to-none in practice,” Mulkey said, “and that’s what you see in the game. She’s just got a motor, and it never stops.”
LSU is also nearing the program record for consecutive wins to start a season. It needs just five more victories to match that streak, which the 2022-23 team set after it won the first 23 games of its national-championship-winning season.
These Tigers can start by beating Vanderbilt (14-3), which defeated Georgia but dropped games against No. 12 Kentucky and Ole Miss to begin its Southeastern Conference slate.
