At one point of the exhibition game her LSU team played Thursday, coach Kim Mulkey stopped to needle her two freshmen for the free throws they kept missing.
The Tigers clanked 10 freebies in the 119-54 win. Lola Lampley missed four, and Anna Minaeva drew iron on the other six.
“Anna, what’s up with those free throws?” Mulkey said, tongue in cheek. “Is it conditioning?”
Minaeva, the 6-foot-5 center from Russia, had missed the last two weeks of practice with a quad injury. The 17-year-old didn’t play in LSU’s first exhibition contest, so the 17 minutes she logged on Thursday were her first taste of live college basketball action.
“Just a little nervous,” Minaeva replied.
And those jitters poked through the skilled freshman’s unofficial LSU debut. Minaeva flashed her potential in the win over Loyola-New Orleans, but she also showed why Mulkey always feels the need to remind folks just how young she is – and that it may take some time for her to carve out a consistent role for a program that aspires to play for a national title this season.
Minaeva has already played professional basketball in Russia. But she won’t turn 18 until January.
“Here,” Mulkey said, “she’d still be in high school.”
So, for now, LSU isn’t expecting Minaeva to deliver more than the modest stat line she posted Thursday: 10 points, five rebounds, two fouls, a turnover and a few too many misses at the charity stripe.
There were good moments. Minaeva used her size advantages, for instance, to find four open looks around the rim. She converted three of them, including one in which she sealed a defender in the low post, caught an entry pass, spun to her right and banked in a pretty, left-handed layup.
Minaeva drew five fouls in the exhibition. But she did sink only four of her 10 free-throw tries, and because the Wolfpack often shaded an extra defender toward her in the post, she sometimes struggled to put herself in a position to receive entry passes from LSU’s guards.
But Minaeva also pulled down a pair of offensive rebounds, and she did minimize her turnovers and fouls.
“I think she did fine,” Mulkey said. “I think she gave us a presence in there to pass her the ball. She’s got really good hands. She really wanted to pass it one time on the break there, and that’s when they all went crazy on the bench because she’s an unbelievable passer for a big.”
The play Mulkey was referring to was the quick pass Minaeva tried to flip to Mikaylah Williams late in the fourth quarter after she stole the ball away from a Loyola ballhandler. The dish took a deflection and caromed in the wrong direction. But it was crafty enough to serve as a brief reminder of why Mulkey calls the freshman “baby Jokic.”
Like the three-time NBA MVP on the Denver Nuggets, Minaeva is a center who knows how to set up open looks for her teammates. Mulkey said Thursday that her version of Nikola Jokic is “extremely basketball smart” and that she likes to raise her hand in film sessions so she can ask questions.
“I like that,” Mulkey said. “That tells you she’s in tune to what’s going on. She’s not tuning you out because there’s a language barrier. She understands.”
Now, Minaeva likely won’t have to wait much longer see the kind of extended run she was given Thursday. LSU doesn’t play its first power-conference opponent until the week of Thanksgiving. The first seven games on its schedule this season, which begins at 7 p.m. Monday against Southeastern Louisiana, are all home battles with mid-major foes.
The Tigers are expected to win each one comfortably.
So November should give Minaeva plenty of chances to work through whatever’s left of the jitters she blamed for the free throws she missed on Thursday.
“You’ve gotta love an innocent answer,” Mulkey said, smiling. “What do you say, you know? That’s a 17-year-old response.”
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