Coach Kim Mulkey didn't think her new LSU roster had much depth. Then she looked at the team that won the 2023 national title and remembered that she had only 10 scholarship players that year.

The lesson? LSU can win with a bigger roster, and it can win with a smaller one, too. What matters more than filling up all 15 slots on the team is nailing a solid eight-player rotation that Mulkey can use in February and March — and building a style of play around what those contributors can offer.

"You learn how to adapt to what you have," Mulkey said.

And what the LSU women's basketball team has, at least for now, is a smaller, more versatile bunch that knows how to defend the perimeter and play in transition. That group looked sharp in its first exhibition contest of the season, and now it has one more tune-up against Loyola-New Orleans at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center before the real games begin Monday.

The starting lineup Mulkey used in the first exhibition featured four perimeter players — Jada Williams, MiLaysia Fulwiley, Mikaylah Williams and ZaKiyah Johnson — and one post player, the 6-foot-3 sophomore Grace Knox. The first two contributors who entered the game off the bench were 6-foot guard Laila Reynolds and 6-2 forward Lola Lampley.

LSU didn't have 6-3 forward Noa Morro (shin) and 6-5 center Anna Minaeva (quad), so it was considerably smaller than it would've been had those two frontcourt players been healthy enough to play.

Morro's out until at least late November, and Minaeva is a 17-year-old who's acclimating to college basketball's speed and physicality.

So the Tigers are gearing up to play about as much small ball in the first chunk of their regular-season games as they did in their exhibition win last Thursday. They're hoping those lineups can achieve similar results.

"It works well because we're little," Mikaylah Williams said, "so we have to run. That's something that we have to do. We're not as big as we used to be right now, so we have to run."

LSU scored 82 points off turnovers and 61 points on the fast break in the exhibition it played against NAIA squad the University of North Texas at Dallas. Its starters outscored the Trailblazers 60-5 in the 14 minutes they spent on the floor.

"You gotta use your athleticism," Mulkey said, "and you use that with speed and quickness, which we do have. And does that mean we're gonna have to, in some big games, extend our defense to play more full-court pressure? How long can they last?"

And how well will they clean the glass? LSU has been one of the nation's five best rebounding teams for each of the last four seasons. Last year, the Tigers pulled down more boards than all but two Division I programs even though they didn't have either Angel Reese or Aneesah Morrow.

Now, Mulkey and her staff have to replace the production on the glass they received from Kate Koval and Amiya Joyner — their two leading rebounders in 2025-26. Knox will have to rebound. So, too, will Johnson, Morro, Lampley, Reynolds and Mikaylah Williams.

The group is not as physically imposing as some of the teams Mulkey has built in her career.

But it's chock-full of speed, length and athleticism, which Mulkey plans to take advantage of when the 2026-27 season begins Monday against Southeastern Louisiana.

"You adapt, you adjust," Mulkey said, "and I feel like I have a coaching staff that will help me realize that our best team for a long period of time this year might be small. And you go with what you think is going to give you an opportunity to win until your bigs become comfortable."