Spring Break
Lady Dogs need grand showing in SEC tourney
RYNE DENNIS
Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Sports
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But for the Georgia women's basketball team, the madness has escalated to a new level entering the SEC tournament in Little Rock, Ark., as every game has literally become sudden death for the Lady Bulldogs, beginning with their tip-off today against Kentucky in the first round.
"The only thing that really is important is Kentucky," Georgia coach Andy Landers said. "The negative side is if we have a loss you can stick a fork in us, that wouldn't be good at all. The positive side, it's a great opportunity to win another game and move on."
Georgia is on the vastly discussed bubble that enters discussions around the end of November and lasts through Selection Sunday when the NCAA field is picked.
For Georgia to be one of the teams selected, it has work to do. The Lady Dogs are the seventh seed in the SEC tournament, only mustering a 7-7 record in the conference this season. One of the flaws this year for Georgia was its five-game losing streak in the middle of conference play.
But among Georgia's seven victories in the conference, three came against the top teams: No. 6 Auburn, No. 21 Florida and No. 22 Vanderbilt, and that is something Landers hopes the committee considers when casting a decision on his team's chances of making the tournament.
"What I want them to consider is that we didn't make [our] schedule, the conference made our schedule," he said. "Arguably, we played the three best teams in the league twice. So did we lose some games in a row? Yeah. But someone else in the conference would have lost another game in a row if one of those three teams would have factored into it."
Georgia knows what is ahead of them and hopes to play the SEC tournament like it played its last two games of the regular season - convincing wins against Kentucky and Florida, respectively.
"We're going to have the right frame of mind and we're going to go in there and put back to back games together like we just did and just fight and have fun," point guard Ashley Houts said.
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