• By PERRYN KEYS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Dec 2, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 1:15 a.m.

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His team had sputtered during its last few games, and he knew all along this season would be a little rugged in the beginning.

So Monday night, as the LSU women’s basketball team prepared to face Texas Southern, coach Van Chancellor vowed to remain calm. Not to raise his voice. Not to lose his patience or blow his top.

“Well, buddy, they tested me tonight,” Chancellor said, grinning.

In the end, however, Chancellor passed the test. So did his young team.

Leading TSU by just six points at halftime, LSU scored 23 straight points and held Texas Southern without a field goal for a 9-minute, 6-second stretch in the second half, turning a sloppy, tense game into a 61-30 laugher Monday night inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

LSU (2-3) held a slim 21-15 halftime lead and appeared groggy, sloppy or both.

But LSU broke the game open by pressing for much of the second half, posting 17 steals and forcing 27 turnovers in all.

Freshman guard Destini Hughes, who led all scorers with 14 points, broke LSU out of its sleepwalk with back-to-back 3-pointers early in the second half. The first gave LSU its first double-digit lead of the night, 29-17, with 14:03 remaining.

“There’s no excuse,” Hughes said, explaining the sluggish start.

“We didn’t come out to play. ... There was no effort. We knew we were playing badly, and we knew we had to pick it up in the second half.”

Monday night’s game was something of a homecoming for Yolanda Wells-Broughton, who served on Chancellor’s staff last season before taking over her own program at Texas Southern (1-3).

Her team came into the PMAC after back-to-back losses to a pair of Southland Conference schools, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Lamar.

“I was very nervous,” Wells-Broughton said, smiling. “I actually tripped coming out onto the court. I tried to stay as long as possible to get the butterflies out.”