LSU defeated Texas Southern by a record amount of points during its women’s college basketball game on Thursday night in Baton Rouge. The Bayou Bengals paid the visiting Tigers a minuscule amount of money to lose in historic fashion.
Was it worth it?
These kinds of buy games, which are extremely common in college basketball and collegiate athletics, create an interesting dilemma for the inferior program. On one hand, it needs to make money as program. On the other hand, a blowout loss of this caliber is terrible for morale and optics. There is not an alternative.
LSU broke a Division-I record during the women’s college basketball game.
Coming off of a run to the Sweet 16 in 2025-26, LSU is currently ranked as the No. 9 team in women’s college basketball for 2026-27. It began the season on Monday with a blowout win over Southeast Louisiana by a final score of 129-35. These kinds of non-conference games often get out of hand. The smaller schools don’t have the talent to stack up with a legitimate title contender.
A 94-point win, while impressive, is not that big of deal. These things happen fairly often in the months of November and December. Especially when a Division-I team plays against a Division-II program or an NAIA team. Blowouts happen a lot.
A 109-point win over a Division-I opponent, however, is a very big deal!
LSU played Texas Southern at home on Thursday night. The Tigers beat the Tigers by a final score of 131-22. Texas Southern scored 13 points in the first quarter, three points in the third quarter and six points in the fourth quarter. It did not score a single point in the second quarter!
Meanwhile, LSU had seven different players finish with double-digit points. 10 different players scored at least three points.
The win was historic. LSU defeated Texas Southern by 109 points. It was the largest margin of victory in Division I women’s basketball history against a Division I opponent. Kim Mulkey broke her own record from 2016 when Baylor beat Winthrop by 108 points.
Texas Southern did not get paid that much money to lose.
In exchange for the crushing defeat, Texas Southern received a chunk of cash from LSU. But not that much…
The visitors were paid only $25,000 to travel to Baton Rouge and lose in historic fashion by 109 points. Was it worth it?
A team that finished near the bottom of the SWAC standings last season was always going to lose to a top-10 team. Less than 5% of “buy games” result in an upset during a typical year. The Tigers knew they were going to lose to the Tigers.
With that being said, Texas Southern is now on the wrong end of the worst loss in Division I women’s college basketball history. Even if the $25,000 helps to fund the program in the short term, what impact does the loss have on the program long term?
The brand takes a big hit in terms of image and recruiting players to make the wrong kind of history is a tough selling point.
Edward Waters lost to Jackson State in football at the beginning of the season. Its university president vowed never to play that kind of game for such a small amount of money again because of how badly it looks for the school. Texas Southern might want to consider a similar approach. Unfortunately, the current system makes that a lot more difficult than it sounds.