University of Georgia Athletics
Lady Dogs Travel To Mississippi State Sunday
January 22, 2005 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 22, 2005
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Lady Bulldogs attempt to end "yo-yo" dynamic
Georgia travels to Mississippi State today attempting to end the vicious cycle Lady Bulldog Basketball has become of late. Since returning from the holiday break, Georgia has developed a painful pattern of producing a stellar outing followed by an extremely subpar performance.
At times, Georgia appears to be close to becoming the consensus pre-season top-five pick every poll listed it as. Just as quickly, the Lady Dogs turn into the same bunch that dropped three of five games between Nov. 27-Dec. 7.
The Lady Bulldogs easily dispatched Arkansas, 78-57, on Dec. 30 in their SEC opener before looking extremely lethargic in a 68-52 victory over 1-10 Tennessee-Martin.
Georgia rebounded to thrash Ole Miss, 78-51, on Jan. 6 but then looked equally unimpressive in a 24-point setback at top-ranked LSU just two days later.
In their next outing, the Lady Dogs manhandled an overmatched Stetson squad by 55 points. All that good was seemingly undone when Georgia fell 71-63 at Kentucky on Jan. 13.
The Lady Dogs then bounced back to dismiss Auburn, 71-56, which brings us to today and - if history continues to repeat itself - an ugly afternoon of basketball.
"We've resembled a yo-yo these last couple of weeks," Andy Landers said. "It has just been very difficult for us to establish any consistency. We have had some very good performances and, we've had some very disappointing performances, which basically defines inconsistency."
Keeping an eye on...
Entering the Kentucky game:
Andy Landers is...
- 39 wins shy of becoming the state's winningest college basketball coach
Alexis Kendrick is...
- 15 assists from No. 8 Coco Miller on UGA's career leaders list
Sherill Baker is...
- 39 steals from No. 5 Janet Harris on UGA's career leaders list
Home, road SEC stats are polar opposites
Georgia's team statistics for its three SEC games at Stegeman Coliseum and its two league dates on the road are about as diverse as one could imagine.
At home, the Lady Bulldogs are averaging 75.7 points and giving up 54.7 per game, a margin of victory of 21.0. Georgia out-rebounded Arkansas, Ole Miss and Auburn by an average of 16.3 boards.
On the road, the Lady Dogs have scored just 57.5 points in losses to LSU and Kentucky while surrendering 73.5 points. That converts to a margin of defeat of 16.0. The rebound margin against the Lady Tigers and Wildcats is negative 9.5 boards.
Parity? How 'bout just calling it a home-court advantage
SEC road struggles aren't confined to Georgia's Lady Bulldogs this season.
Through Thursday's league action, home teams have compiled an 17-7 record in conference games this season, a winning percentage of .708.
Subtract out the performances of Auburn and South Carolina, who are both winless in SEC play to date, and other 10 league teams are 13-3 (.813) versus conference foes at home. The only teams to win on the road in a locale other than Columbia or The Plains are Florida (at Arkansas), LSU (at Florida) and Tennessee (at Vanderbilt).
Lady Dogs lead series
Georgia enters today's game with an 18-10 record all-time against Mississippi State; however, State has won three of the last four matchups in Starkville to tie the series at 6-6 at Humphrey Coliseum.
Last season in Athens, Georgia overpowered State in each team's SEC opener, building a 17-7 lead early in the contest and increasing that margin to 48-24 at the half. Christi Thomas led Georgia with her season-best efforts for scoring and rebounds with game-highs of 27 points and 15 boards
Each of the last six meetings in Starkville have been extremely close affairs. Every one of those has been decided in the final minute of play, with three (in 1995, 1997 and 2002) going down to the final 10 seconds. Two seasons ago in the most Georgia's most recent trip to Starkville, an MSU four-point trip - a FT followed by an offensive board off an missed FT followed by a three - turned a 71-68 Georgia lead with 41 seconds left into a 72-71 deficit with 38 seconds remaining. State then scored four more unanswered points to secure a 76-71 victory.
Humphrey keeps doubling up
The nice thing about working with Lady Bulldog Basketball is that there's usually a good reference point where you know historical statistical research will end. Rarely can you go past Katrina McClain's 1987 National Player of the Year campaign without matching any significant milestone.
Five games into her SEC career, Tasha Humphrey already has accomplished something McClain never did - post double-doubles in five straight regular-season SEC games. In 1987, McClain posted 22 double-doubles in 32 games but only had four straight in conference play.
Humphrey is averaging an amazing 19.5 points and 11.2 rebounds in league action, and she is the only player with more than two double-doubles in SEC play.
To match Humphrey's quintet of consecutive SEC double-doubles you have to go all the way back to 1981-82, the season before the league even began tracking regular-season standings in women's basketball. Janet Harris averaged a double-double of 22.4 points and 12.4 rebounds as a freshman that season, including 20.4 points and 12.1 boards in nine regular-season games against SEC competition. Harris posted double-doubles in the final eight of those contests, the longest streak of double-doubles ever by a Lady Bulldog against league foes.
Doubling time on double-double notes
Tasha Humphrey leads the SEC with nine double-doubles this season. Humphrey still has a way to go to challenge the Lady Bulldog single-season record of 22 double-doubles.
That mark has been set on three occasions - by Katrina McClain in 1987 and by Janet Harris in both 1982 and 1983. Harris, who still ranks No. 19 and No. 11 among NCAA Division I career scoring and rebounding leaders, had 21 double-doubles in 1985 and holds the Georgia career mark with 75 double-doubles in 131 games played for the Lady Bulldogs.
Chambers leads career nights
Cori Chambers' 26-point outburst headlined a trio of career-high scoring performances posted by the Lady Dogs against Stetson.
In fact, with 7:40 left in the contest, Chambers had scored more points herself (26) than the Hatters had as a team (25).
Freshmen Megan Darrah and Sara Kate Greene also posted career bests in the scoring column. Darrah poured in 17 points to top her previous best of 10 against Augusta State. Greene scored seven points - six of those coming on a 2-of-2 effort from behind the three-point arc - to improve upon the two points she scored against Furman and Idaho.
Trio join Lady Dogs' top-10s
Sherill Baker, Cori Chambers and Alexis Kendrick have placed themselves alongside the greatest names in UGA's career annals as each has joined one of more of the Lady Dogs' list of top-10 career statistical leaders lists.
Kendrick handed out eight assists in the season-opener against Furman to move into the No. 10 position among career leaders for dishes. She has since ascended to the No. 9 slot.
Baker earned a spot on Georgia's steals ledger with five thefts during the Lady Dogs' win over No. 2 Texas on Nov. 21 and is now in the No. 6 position.
Chambers, who has accounted for nearly 40 percent of the Lady Bulldogs three-pointers this season, joined the top-10 list of career threes during her five-trifecta outburst against Stetson on Jan. 10. She displaced the previous No. 10, Camille Murphy, who knocked down 81 shots from behind the arc from 1998-2002.
81 or more still the magic score
The 2004-05 Lady Bulldogs have added several more notches to perhaps the greatest indicator in all of college athletics - other than the most obvious of out-scoring the opponent. With a 97-42 victory over Stetson, Georgia improved to 5-0 in games this season when the Lady Dogs have scored more than 80 points.
The Lady Dogs improved their astronomical record under Andy Landers when the Lady Bulldogs have topped that mark. Semantically, that means 81 points or more, but "more than 80" rolls off the tongue better.
The Lady Dogs are now 356-5 when they've scored more than 80 points under Landers - an almost unfathomable winning percentage of 98.614958449.
Locker room, "G" remain off limits
Since Dec. 6, the Lady Bulldogs have been supplying their own practice clothes and Andy Landers has not allowed the team to use its 3,600-square-foot locker room facility.
"I don't think we're representing ourselves like a Georgia Basketball team right now," Landers said. "I think we take a lot of things for granted. I don't think they understand what the `G' on the uniform has represented for the last 26 years, getting up and down the floor with passion. It's just not acceptable."
Following a decisive win over Ole Miss on Jan. 6, Landers said his team was headed in a much better direction than it was a month earlier.
"We're getting there," Landers said. "We haven't turned the corner in many ways. But in some ways we're inching forward and making progress. The thing about tonight's game was it was solid by everyone."
However, things took a turn for the worse in Georgia's last two SEC dates, losses at LSU and Kentucky.
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