LSU women’s basketball: Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds not concerned with rankings ahead of first round matchup

The 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament is officially under way and we’re less than 24 hours from seeing No. 14 Rice (19-14) take on No. 3 LSU (28-5) in Baton Rouge. While the rankings show that it shouldn’t be a close game, Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds explained that her team isn’t concerned with the numbers ahead of their first round matchup.

Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds not concerned with rankings ahead of first round matchup vs. LSU

LSU and Rice women’s basketball have found themselves on completely opposite sides of the spectrum throughout the 2023-24 women’s college basketball season.

For coach Kim Mulkey and the Tigers, expectations have been sky high right from the start. Coming off a 2023 national championship victory, there’s been a massive purple and gold target painted on their logo since November.

For Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds, her squad found themselves in a very different position. After facing a second round exit in the 2023 NIT, the Owls followed things up by entering the AAC Tournament with a 10-seed, and just about everyone had counted them out.

However, they went on to win four straight in their conference tournament, winning the whole thing and ending up with a No. 14 seed in the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Once again, they find themselves with a much lower seed than their opponent – the LSU Tigers – and they couldn’t be less concerned about it.

“We haven’t talked a whole lot about the number that’s beside our name in this tournament,” Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds said to the media this afternoon. “We did just go through a tournament where we were a 10-seed, and we won four straight days. Our back was against the wall for all four of those games; no one believed that we were going to do what we did other than the people in our locker room.

The bracket is set. #GoOwls👐 x #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/iCMxFkZQeL

— Rice Women’s Basketball (@RiceWBB) March 18, 2024

“So, we’re just trying to have that same mindset, talk about the same things, gameplan the same way we would, but we’re throwing the numbers out the window and not talking about that as much. It’s just about – there’s a hoop, there’s two teams, it’s the same length it’s always been, the goal’s the same height it’s always been. Let’s just go out there and play basketball and try to put our best brand of basketball on a national stage.”

Even so, the Rice women’s basketball team has quite the battle ahead of them. The 2024 LSU Tigers are about as talented a team as any in the country. All five players are consistently capable of scoring on offense, and with Angel Reese and Aneesah Morrow holding things down in the middle, scoring on them is no easy task.

If it’s up to coach Kim Mulkey, this won’t stay close for long as they look to stay healthy ahead of the second round of the tournament. Still, if Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds has anything to say about it, we could be in store for quite the show on Friday afternoon.

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