University of Georgia Athletics
Georgia To Meet Oklahoma On Sunday
January 26, 2008 | Women's Basketball
Date: January 27, 2008
Time: 4:00 p.m. CENTRAL
Location: Lloyd Noble Center; Norman, Okla.
TV: ESPN2 (Pam Ward, play-by-play; Nancy Lieberman, analyst)
Radio Lady Bulldog Radio Network
GXtra: Audio
The basics
The Georgia Lady Bulldogs step out of SEC action on Sunday afternoon to travel to Norman, Okla., and face the Oklahoma Sooners in an intersectional clash of national powerhouses. The contest will be televised nationally on ESPN2, with Pam Ward and Nancy Lieberman handling play-by-play and analyst duties.
Georgia arrives sporting a 16-3 record and ranked No. 17 and No. 14 in this week’s Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today polls, respectively. The Lady Bulldogs are 3-2 in SEC play and snapped a three-game road losing streak with a decisive 82-55 victory over Florida on Thursday evening. That win also represented Andy Landers’ 700th “W” as head coach at Georgia.
Tasha Humphrey leads Georgia and ranks second in the SEC offensively at 17.0 points per game. With a 14-board effort against Alabama last Sunday, Angel Robinson supplanted Humphrey as the Lady Bulldogs’ top rebounder. Robinson is averaging 8.7 caroms per game, while Humphrey is at 8.6. Overall, Robinson has three more rebounds than Humphrey on the year.
Ashley Houts and Robinson are averaging double-digit points per game as well at 13.3 and 10.5. Houts also leads the Lady Bulldogs in assists (4.7 apg) and steals (3.1 spg), while Robinson is tops on the team in blocks (1.7 bpg).
Oklahoma possesses a 12-4 mark on the year, including a 3-2 record in Big 12 action. The Sooners are No. 11 in both national polls this week.
Courtney Paris averages a double-double of 16.3 points and 15.4 rebounds per game, while freshman Danielle Robinson chips in 13.5 points and Ashley Paris adds 11.6 per game. Robinson leads the Sooners in assists (4.3 apg) and steals (2.4 spg).
Series history with the Sooners
The Lady Bulldogs have compiled a 3-0 record in meetings with the Sooners. Georgia swept both ends of a home-and-home contract executed in during the 1997-98 and 1998-99 seasons and winning a match-up at the Coaches vs. Cancer Challenge in Madison, Wis., in November 2000.
In the most recent meeting, Coco Miller poured in 20 points and Tawana McDonald added 16 points and 17 rebounds to lead Georgia to a 94-70 win on Nov. 22, 2000. The Lady Bulldogs grabbed an early 23-9 lead and led by double figures for the final 14:57 of that contest.
Georgia then dropped a 75-73 decision to Notre Dame, the eventual 2001 national champions, in the Coaches vs. Cancer championship game.
Coco and Kelly Miller who rank with the Paris’ among the best twin tandems in women’s hoops history also played significant roles in the first two meetings with OU.
Kelly Miller scored 30 points, Pam Irwin added 26 and Coco Miller chipped in 18 to lead Georgia to a 94-76 victory over Oklahoma on Dec. 11, 1997, in Norman. Phylesha Whaley scored a game-high 31 points in a losing effort for the Sooners.
In the rematch in Athens on Dec. 13, 1998, Coco scored 19 points to lead six Lady Bulldogs in double figures in an 88-79 triumph over OU. LaNeishea Caufield led the Sooners with a game-high 20 points. Those Lady Bulldogs eventually earned a berth in the 1999 Final Four before losing to Duke in the national semifinals.
Keeping an eye on...
Entering the Oklahoma game:
Andy Landers is...
18 victories shy of his 800th win as a collegiate head coach
Tasha Humphrey is...
88 points shy of No. 4 Coco Miller among UGA’s career leaders
57 rebounds shy of 1,000 career boards
220 rebounds shy of No. 3 Wanda Holloway among UGA’s career leaders
3 blocks from No. 8 Kara Braxton among UGA’s career leaders
25 FT attempts from Katrina McClain’s UGA career record
7 FTs made from No. 10 Tamika Catchings among the SEC’s career leaders
11 FGs made from co-No. 6s Tracy Henderson and Wanda Holloway among UGA’s career leaders
Megan Darrah is...
65 points from becoming the Lady Dogs’ 29th 1,000-point scorer
3 3-pt. FGs made from No. 7 Alexis Kendrick among UGA’s career leaders
8 3-pt. FGs made from No. 6 Janese Hardrick among UGA’s career leaders
Lady Bulldogs solid vs. the Big 12
Georgia has played every school that comprises the Big 12 Conference and sports a 19-6 record in games against those teams as outlined below.
Current members of the Lady Bulldogs are 4-2 against the Big 12.
Rebecca Rowsey is the lone holdover from a 71-58 setback to Texas in Dec. 2003.
The Lady Dogs swept a pair of match-ups with the Longhorns the following campaign, a 78-64 regular-season decision in Athens and a 70-68 rematch in Dallas in the second round of the 2005 NCAA Tournament.
Baylor opened defense of its 2005 national title by overcoming an 18-point second-half deficit to defeat Georgia, 84-72, in the State Farm Tip-off Classic in Lubbock.
Last season, the Lady Bulldogs defeated Iowa State, 76-56, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Landers eighth to 700 victories, third to do so at one school
Thursday’s 82-55 victory over Florida represented Andy Landers’ 700th win as the Lady Bulldogs’ head coach.
Landers became the eighth coach to post 700 wins at four-year institutions and reached that milestone at the fourth-fastest pace as outlined below.
Landers is just the third coach to record 700 wins at a single school. He and Pat Summitt are the only two coaches on the ledger to never have a losing season.
A 2007 inductee into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, Landers also ranks second among Division I coaching leaders in NCAA Tourney appearances (24), NCAA “Sweet 16s” (17) and weeks with a team in the AP poll (424).
Explaining our take on Landers’ “career” wins
Most reports about Andy Landers’ 700th victory at Georgia referred to the accomplishment being his “overall” and/or “career” win total. That’s not quite accurate.
Georgia politely disagrees with the NCAA on Landers’ career record. Prior to arriving in Athens, he compiled an 82-21 record in four seasons at Roane State Community College, a junior college in Harriman, Tenn. The NCAA does not recognize those wins because they were not earned at a four-year institution. During Landers’ tenure at Roane, more than a third of those victories 33 or 40.2 percent to be exact came against four-year schools. In fact, Roane compiled a 33-1 record in contests vs. four-year schools under Landers.
Georgia includes Landers’ Roane State record in his career totals and, therefore, lists his career record as 782-239. Landers is 18 victories away from likely becoming the fourth coach to secure 800 wins at the collegiate level. Pat Summitt and Jody Conradt already have and C. Vivian Stringer entered Saturday’s game with Villanova with 793 victories.
Don’t chuckle because it’s not always a given
Somewhat lost in the shuffle of the Florida victory was the fact that by securing their 16th win of the season, the Lady Bulldogs guaranteed a 29th consecutive winning campaign under Andy Landers. Even if Georgia loses out the rest of the way, the Lady Dogs would probably finish 16-14...we’re only guessing an NCAA Tournament bid would be out of the question at that point but hypothetically a 16-15 season would still be possible.
Landers’ streak of 29 straight winning seasons is the second longest in Division I wbb history. Georgia is one of only four schools to post a winning record in all 26 seasons since women’s hoops came under the auspices of the NCAA with the 1981-82 campaign. FYI, Louisiana Tech, Tennessee and Wisconsin-Green Bay are the other three.
Return to the Lloyd Noble Center
Georgia opened last season with a 78-69 win over Rutgers, the eventual 2007 NCAA runner-up, at the Lloyd Noble Center as part of the State Farm Tip-off Classic. Ashley Houts christened her collegiate career with 18 points and Janese Hardrick also scored 18 to lead the Lady Bulldogs.
That outing was memorable on several levels. Most notably:
Georgia suited up only seven players for the contest and was down to six for a stretch of the second half when a stomach ailment sent Hardrick to the locker room.
It also served as the day when Andy Landers was introduced as a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2007 induction class.
tasha34.com takes Humphrey’s case to the web
Georgiadogs.com, the official website of University of Georgia Athletics, launched tasha34.com, a site devoted to promoting Tasha Humphrey for National Player of the Year and All-America honors, on Jan. 23.
The web site is the first UGA has produced exclusively to promote any student-athlete for national awards and includes a biographical information, photos and an interactive email option to ask Humphrey questions.
Humphrey already is a three-time All-America, including a spot on the Kodak All-America team during her sophomore campaign. She also is a three-time consensus first-team All-SEC performer.
Humphrey holds the school record for career free throws made, and she ranks No. 5 and No. 4 on the Lady Dogs’ career leaders ledgers for points and rebounds, respectively.
Houts pours it on against Gators
Ashley Houts scored a career-high 25 points in Thursday’s win over Florida at the O’Connell Center, producing an extremely solid linescore...8-of-16 FGs, 3-of-3 3FGs, 6-of-8 FTs, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 5 steals.
Houts’ first-half performance was one of the best in Lady Bulldog history. Houts scored 21 points during the period, single-handedly matching the output of Florida as a team. At the break, Houts also already had five boards, five assists and three steals.
Houts, Paris bring back Gold from U21 Worlds
Georgia’s Ashley Houts and Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris were teammates on the United States National Team that went undefeated in capturing the Gold Medal at the FIBA U21 World Championships last summer in Moscow.
Houts was the lone sophomore named to the U.S. squad and averaged 4.1 points, including 14 points in 16 minutes of action against Belgium in the quarterfinal round. Paris started and averaged 10.9 points and 8.0 rebounds per game, including tourney-high outputs of 18 points and 10 rebounds against Belgium.
“T-Hump” chasing Coco’s point tally
Tasha Humphrey became the Lady Bulldogs’ fifth 2,000-point scorer during her season-high 25-point outburst against Alabama last Sunday and enters today’s game 88 away from Coco Miller among Georgia’s career scoring leaders.
The National Player of the Year candidate is currently No. 5 among the Lady Bulldogs’ career points leaders but sports a better career scoring average than all but one player ahead of her as outlined below.
Humphrey began the season in the No. 9 position but inched past Tracy Henderson with a pair of free throws at the 3:38 mark of the first half versus Georgia Southern on Nov. 13, moved ahead of Wanda Holloway in the waning moments of the Oakland game on Nov. 29, surged in front of La’Keshia Frett with a three-pointer with 13:22 remaining in the victory over Georgia Tech on Dec. 2 and overtook Teresa Edwards late in the second half of the loss at Vanderbilt on Jan. 17.
“T-Hump” chasing 1,000 rebounds, Holloway
Tasha Humphrey enters today’s game 57 rebounds shy of becoming the fourth Lady Bulldog with 1,000 career rebounds and a probably unattainable 220 boards away from catching Wanda Holloway among Georgia’s career rebounding leaders.
The National Player of the Year candidate is currently No. 4 among the Lady Bulldogs’ career rebounds leaders but her career average is lower than the three players ahead of her as outlined below.
Humphrey began the season at the No. 10 spot but inched past Tracy Henderson against Southern Cal on Nov. 24, overtook La’Keshia Frett during a Nov. 29 win over Oakland, moved ahead of Cynthia Collins in a Dec. 9 victory over Davidson, surpassed Tawana McDonald vs. FIU on Dec. 30, supplanted Christi Thomas in the Presbyterian win on Jan. 3 and bested Tammye Jenkins during the SEC opener against Ole Miss on Jan. 10.
Humphrey makes history at the line
The lone highlight from the Jan. 13 loss at Auburn was Tasha Humphrey’s breaking the Lady Bulldog career record for free throws made. Humphrey connected on her first trip to the line at the 11:21 mark of the first half to surpass the mark set by 1987 National Player of the Year Katrina McClain.
Humphrey actually tied McClain’s tally when she hit both ends of a one-and-one with 4:55 left in the Ole Miss on Jan. 10. Humphrey progressed to the mark in an efficient manner. It took McClain 616 trips to knock down 499 FTs. Humphrey got there in just 574...42 less attempts.
Georgia’s magic number pops up in six outings
The Lady Bulldogs are 6-0 this season when scoring 80 or more points, upping Georgia’s astronomical winning percentage under Andy Landers when they put up that many points to 414-7. That equates to a success rate of .983372921 over the past 28-plus seasons.
Somewhat interestingly at least we hope you think it’s interesting since it took quite a while to dig the information up is the fact that the Lady Bulldogs are just 28-8 (.778) when they score exactly 79 points, with half of those loses being by three points or less.
Georgia did manage to defeat Davidson on Dec. 9 despite scoring 79 points.
Plenty of tube time the rest of the way
After having just one of their first 16 games televised, nine of the Lady Bulldogs’ final regular-season dates will air on TV. In addition to today’s date with Oklahoma, games with LSU and Tennessee also will be televised nationally by ESPN2. FSN South aired last Sunday’s game with Alabama and will show upcoming outings versus Kentucky and South Carolina. CSS televised a Jan. 15 match-up with Vanderbilt, and also will do so for home dates with Florida and Auburn.