BATON ROUGE, La. — The Ole Miss women’s basketball team (9-6, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) dropped its SEC road opener, 70-54, at LSU on Thursday evening. The Rebels were led by Kelsey Briggs, who had a team best 11 points off the bench, while Alissa Alston added 10 points in the loss. The loss snapped Ole Miss’ three-game win streak.

The game was tight throughout, but the home team began to pull away in the third quarter. Despite a tough shooting night, Ole Miss saw several bright spots of the bench in Briggs, Alston and Kiara Golden, who added five points.

Coming out of the break, Ole Miss started to cut into the lead and with two triples from Torri Lewis, but the Rebels found themselves trailing by seven, 42-35, with 4:43 left in the third quarter.

LSU used an 11-3 run to break open a 15-point lead in the third quarter, but back-to-back baskets from Kelsey Briggs to close the third quarter kept some momentum with the road team but Ole Miss wouldn’t get closer than 11 the rest of the way as they dropped their first game in the last four outings.

The home team took an early 8-2 lead and held the Rebels scoreless for over four minutes but a triple from Shandricka Sessom coupled with a bucket from Alissa Alston got cut a once six-point LSU down to just one point at the first media timeout.  The first quarter was a game of runs from both teams and Ole Miss closed the first quarter on a 6-0 run courtesy of a triple from Madinah Muhammad and a three-point play from Erika Sisk.

Ole Miss continued its run from the first quarter and with a triple from A’Queen Hayes. Ole Miss took its first lead since the opening minutes of the game, 18-16, at the 9:49 mark. Much like the first quarter the score see-sawed back and forth between the teams, with neither team taking more than a two-point lead throughout the second quarter.