BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) Katie Lou Samuelson scored a career-high 28 points, Kia Nurse added a season best 15 points along with eight assists, and No. 3 UConn handed LSU its first loss of the season, 76-53 on Sunday night.
Crystal Dangerfield added 10 points and Gabby Williams grabbed 10 rebounds for UConn (3-0), which extended college basketball's longest active winning streak to 78 games.
Samuelson, a 6-3 sophomore who was among the nation's best freshmen last season, hit seven of her eight made shots from 3-point range and also sank all five of her free throws.
Raigyne Moncrief scored 15 for LSU (3-1), which trailed by 21 at halftime and struggled to get much closer than that for much of the second half. Alexis Hyder added 11 points for the Lady Tigers.
After a competitive first quarter, UConn began to pull way on consecutive 3's by Nurse and Samuelson, which opened a 10-0 run that pushed the Huskies' lead to 31-16.
Later the period, Samuelson hit a 3 from the right wing while being fouled by Hyder and hit a free throw to complete a four-point play which made it 40-23. Samuelson added a couple free throws to give her 14 points in the first half, and Dangerfield added a jumper late in the period to put the Huskies up 46-25 at halftime.
BIG PICTURE
UConn: The Huskies have now won five straight against LSU and improved to 8-1 all-time in the series, with the lone loss coming in the 2007 NCAA tournament regional finals to a Lady Tigers squad led by current WNBA and U.S. national team player Sylvia Fowles. ... UConn's winning streak is the third longest in college basketball history, behind only its own program record of 90 straight from 2008-10 and the UCLA men's record of 88 consecutive victories from 1971-74. ... UConn has now beaten 110 straight unranked opponents since losing by a point to then-unranked St. John's on Feb. 18, 2012.
LSU: The Lady Tigers were off to their best start since their 9-0 beginning to the 2009-10 season and their struggles against a juggernaut like UConn doesn't mean this season's LSU squad won't be competitive in most of its games this season. ... Senior guard Rina Hill made her season debut after missing the first three games because of a hip injury. She played 15 minutes in a reserve role and had a rebound and an assist. ... Hyder's point total was a season low but she narrowly extended to 12 her consecutive games with at least 10 points.
UP NEXT
UConn: The Huskies host Dayton at the on-campus Gampel Pavilion on Tuesday night.
LSU: The Lady Tigers travel to the Virgin Islands for the holiday weekend to play in the Paradise Jam, opening against UTEP on Thanksgiving Day.
