The LSU women's basketball team's freshman center threw a full-court pass and pump-faked a defender on a drive to the rim. That's when the fun really started.

Anna Minaeva, the tall, lumbering 6-foot-5 Russian teenager, had brought the Tigers to their feet. Then Angel Reese left her courtside seat and joined them as if it were March 2023 – not a ho-hum nonconference game in November 2026 that her presence infused with a little extra pizzazz.

"I honestly needed something else to do," Reese said. "I'm always like, 'What's next, what's next, what's next,' and I think it was the perfect time for me to come and see the girls."

Little did Reese know that she'd also see them make some history. LSU took control of its win over Texas Southern on Thursday in the second quarter, and then its sizable lead just kept climbing...and climbing...and climbing...all the way past the point of what would be considered a normal discrepancy between the Tigers and one of their mid-major November foes.

LSU won by 109 points. Yes, 109 points.

Until Thursday, no Division I team had ever beaten another Division I team by that wide of a margin.

One little put-back bucket off a missed free throw late in the fourth quarter was the shot that the Tigers used to break the previous NCAA margin-of-victory record. That mark was 108 points, and it was set by – guess who – one of Mulkey's Baylor teams. In 2016, her Bears beat Winthrop 140-32.

At the end of the first quarter on Thursday, Mulkey's Tigers didn't look like they'd wind up besting her Bears. They led just 25-13 after Texas Southern, the team they had paid $25,000 to visit the PMAC on Thursday, drained three 3-pointers and turned four offensive rebounds into five second-chance points. Not bad.

But then things got bad for the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tigers, who lived by the 3-ball in the first quarter and then died by the 3-ball the rest of the way.

Texas Southern either turned the ball over or took a shot from beyond the arc on 67 of its 83 possessions. The Tigers from Houston wound up with six long-range makes on 29 attempts – or, 58% of the total shots they took. They simply could not get anywhere near the rim, a struggle reflected in their total paint points (four) and free-throw attempts (two).

LSU didn't show much interest in taking it easy on Texas Southern, either. Mulkey played all five of her starters at least 20 minutes, and she even subbed four of them back into the game at the 5:41 mark of the fourth – the point of the beatdown in which the Tigers led by 93.

The decision allowed star senior Mikaylah Williams to nail a 3-pointer right in front of Reese and then point at the LSU great, a willing spectator who stayed in her courtside seat until the final buzzer sounded and then posed for photos with fans after the game.

"It's nostalgic," Reese said. "I got the 'Bayou Barbie' name here and was able to grow my brand here, but also as a basketball player, this is home for me. I was able to win a national championship and make a lot of history here, a lot of moments here."

Reese also made sure she spent some time in the LSU locker room. Williams is the only one of her former teammates left in the bunch. The rest of the Tigers, who each wore special Reese-branded warm-up shirts before the game, moved to Baton Rouge at some point after she was drafted into the WNBA.

"They can be Angel one day," Mulkey said, referring to her current players, "and all of them watched her play when she was here and hopefully because she played here, it helped us recruit those players."

And those players have accomplished quite a bit in just their first two games. The margin-of-victory program record they set on Monday in a 94-point win over Southeastern Louisiana didn't even last three days.

A Division I team has now beaten another Division I team by at least 90 points seven times across the last 10 seasons.

Mulkey has coached the winning team in five of those games, the last two of which have come just this week.

"Coach Mulkey has done a great job continuing this," Reese said. "There hasn't been a drop-off. The fans continue to show up. They're the same fans that I would see three or four years ago, so that is also really cool to see."