Women’s basketball royalty comes to ASU

Louisiana Tech is not your garden variety holiday tournament opponent.

The Lady Techsters program is women’s basketball royalty although don’t hate on Arizona State players if they don’t know the history. Some were not even born in 1999 when Louisiana Tech made the 10th and most recent of its NCAA Tournament Final Four appearances.

Louisiana Tech hasn’t played in the NCAA tourney since 2011 so even its 27 appearances — tied for sixth most nationally — are dusty compared to ASU’s current five-year NCAA run, tied for longest in school history.

Only prior meeting in inaugural NCAA Tournament

When No. 19 ASU and Louisiana Tech play Saturday, in the opening game of the ASU Classic, it will be the first meeting between the schools since the inaugural NCAA Tournament in 1982.

The Lady Techsters won big, 92-54, over Kym Hampton-led ASU in a regional semifinal of what was then a 32team tourney on their way to an historic national title.

They would keep winning at an elite level for a long time under coach Leon Barmore, bringing another NCAA title to Ruston in 1988. In four seasons (1983, ‘87, ‘94, ‘98), they fell one game short of winning it all.

Barmore won 86.9 percent of his games — 576 in all — in a Hall of Fame career that ended in 2002. Along with Pat Summitt at Tennessee and Tara VanDerveer at Stanford, before Geno Auriemma’s ascension at Connecticut, Barmore was as successful as anyone in the first two decades of the NCAA era.

For comparison, Charli Turner Thorne, second winningest coach in Pac-12 history behind VanDerveer, has 425 wins in 22 seasons at ASU and 465 overall in 25 years.

Lady Techsters seeking their place in today’s world

It was inevitable that Louisiana Tech women’s basketball would diminish when larger schools with more resources took the sport seriously.

The question was how far the Lady Techsters would fall and whether they could find a national niche after moving to Conference USA in 2013-14. One of their most famous players, Teresa Weatherspoon, was coach from 2009-14 including when they made their most last NCAA appearance.

Hiring Summitt’s son Tyler, then 23, as coach after Weatherspoon backfired when he admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a player, leading to his resignation in 2016.

Kierra Anthony 50-point explosion

The Lady Techsters come to ASU with a 4-2 record and a national top-15 scorer in senior guard Kierra Anthony (22.5 ppg). Anthony scored a school record 50 points against Houston on Nov. 14.

“It’s a very storied program, and they’re off to a great start,” Turner Thorne said. “They’ve always kind of been known for their guard play, and they’ve got a Pac-12 caliber guard. She’s a three-level scorer, and she can pass.

“They’re well coached. We chose them on purpose. We wanted the tougher game (to open the ASU Classic)”