BATON ROUGE, La. — No. 16 LSU was every bit as good as its preseason national ranking suggested.

On Monday night in the season opener, the Tigers jumped out to a 31-8 lead after one quarter en route to a 125-50 victory over the Bellarmine University women's basketball team at the Maravich Center.

"LSU is a very, very good team," Knights Coach Chancellor Dugan said. "Their bigs are real active and mobile. They took us out of what we wanted to do offensively. Credit goes to them. They played a fantastic game. LSU will go a long way if they stay healthy."

In her Bellarmine debut, sophomore guard Hayley Harrison scored a team-high 19 points for the Knights (0-1), who began their third season in Division I. Harrison sank three of her four 3-point attempts and six of her seven chances from the free-throw line.

Senior forward Cam Browning also made her Bellarmine debut and corralled a team-best six rebounds against LSU (1-0), which was the SEC regular-season runner-up last season and earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament. Junior guard Claire Knies topped the team in assists with four.

Angel Reese, a transfer from Maryland, poured in a game-high 31 points with a game-best 13 rebounds in her LSU debut. She was one of six Tigers who scored in double figures.

LSU led 31-8 after one quarter and never looked back. Reese got established early, scoring 14 of her points in the opening stanza. The Tigers opened the second period with a 15-0 run and led 66-19 at halftime.

Bellarmine will play at 2 p.m. (ET) Sunday at Purdue Fort Wayne.

"I think we can learn from this, we can build from this," Dugan said. "This is the first game. We've got a long season ahead of us. I thought we had some good halftime adjustments. This game is going to help us down the road."

For more coverage of Bellarmine athletics, follow us on Twitter (@BUKnights), Instagram (BUKnights) and Facebook (BUKnights).