LSU cheerleaders team up to get basketball from behind backboard during Women's Final Four

It didn’t take long for a viral moment to occur during the women’s Final Four in Dallas Friday night. The ball got stuck behind the backboard — and two LSU cheerleaders came to the rescue.

Although Virginia Tech guard Cayla King stepped out of bounds, she still shot the ball after the whistle and it wound up behind the shot clock. That’s when one of the cheerleaders stepped on another’s shoulders to swat the ball back down to the court.

The moment occurred with 9:27 left in the first quarter, just 33 seconds into the game.

These LSU cheerleaders saved the day 🤩 #WFinalFour pic.twitter.com/ul8Lofbbkc

— ESPN (@espn) March 31, 2023

This isn’t the first time cheerleaders knocked a ball out from behind the backboard. Last year, two Indiana cheerleaders performed the same routine to get the ball back into play, and it led to an all-time call from announcer Andrew Catalon.

“Get her up there! This is how you do it! … What a play!” Catalon said on the broadcast. “The cheerleader saves the day! And that’s her one shining moment!”

LSU wound up taking a 16-13 lead after the first quarter in its first Final Four game under Mulkey. It marks her fifth appearance in the national semifinals after taking Baylor there four times. That gives her plenty of experience under the bright lights.

However, her LSU players haven’t been there before. Early on in the game, though, Mulkey said her players handled things well.

“I thought we did fine,” Mulkey told ESPN’s Holly Rowe. “We didn’t help on some screens and we can help. I thought we missed some easy shots, but that’s expect. I think you’ve got two teams that are really trying hard.”

That said, ahead of the tournament, she made it clear that although she’s been to the Final Four before, she’s “not going to shoot, dribble, pass, guard any of them.” Instead, she wants the players to lean on there experience as upperclassmen.

“I look at it this way. It may be their first time to be in this situation, but they’re all seniors,” Mulkey said. “They’re all seniors. It’s the first time for my group to be in this situation as well, and we’re not all seniors. So I think they have the edge on experience. All I’m going to do is tweak a thing here or there throughout the course of the game, but it has nothing at all to do with coaching and how long a coach has been somewhere or how many times a coach has been somewhere.”