Georgia Basketball: Lady Bulldogs Beat Rival Georgia Tech
The Georgia basketball women beat Georgia Tech 64-57 Sunday afternoon at the McCamish Pavilion.
Shacobia Barbee posted a career-high 24 points and Krista Donald added a double-double of 11 points and 12 rebounds plus a game-high six assists. Freshman Mackenzie Engram added 12 points on 6-of-6 from the line. Georgia’s 19-of-21 performance at the charity stripe was the difference in the game.
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The Lady Dogs outscored the Yellow Jackets 11-5 over the final 3:39 to ice the contest. Sophomore Kaela Davis scored 20 points to lead Georgia Tech (3-1).
Georgia is now 4-0 on the season a 33-4 all time against the Jackets.
“Defensively, for the most part, we were good all night long,” UGA head coach Andy Landers told Georgiadogs.com. “Our kids did a terrific job defensively. They’ve got players who are really hard to guard, but we defended them very well, as well as you can hope to guard a group of talented athletic kids. In the second half, we rebounded the ball. We ended up outrebounding them by 10, which was huge. Our guards got involved. Cobi, Marjorie (Butler) and Erika (Ford) all got involved on the boards. We kind of held them on the defensive end until we could make some plays offensively.”
A Donald 3-pointer from the right corner put Georgia up 49-47 with 7:44 left. Tiaria Griffin nailed a 3-pointer to make it 56-52 at the 3:21 mark. Following a Tech bucket, Butler hit a jumper and Merritt Hempe scored on a layup to put the Lady Bulldogs up 60-54 with just 35 seconds remaining. Butler hit both ends of two one-and-one opportunities to seal the victory.
Barbee staked Georgia to an early lead, hitting back-to-back 3-pointers and igniting an 11-2 run that put the Lady Bulldogs up 13-6.
“Cobi really has a nice understanding of basketball,” Landers said. “She understands how to play it and where the opportunities are, whether that’s defensive opportunities or those are offensive opportunities. What she did today was sense at the back of the press offense that there were some opportunities.
“She also sensed that on the outside lane on the break, they hadn’t quite gotten back. She wanted the ball and took the ball to the basket hard. She did a couple of those. Early, it was good for our basketball team when she stepped back in hit those threes. So she did things from the beginning of the game to the end of the game on both ends of the floor. She was a playmaker. She was a defensive playmaker and an offensive playmaker today.”
Georgia will host a pair of home games this week. The Lady Bulldogs will take on Georgia Southern on Tuesday before hosting Colgate on Wednesday.
With wins in both games, Coach Landers will return to his alma mater, Tennessee Tech, to claim win number 850 and become just the seventh basketball coach – men’s or women’s – to have 850 wins at a single Division I school. The other six coaches are Pat Summitt, Jim Boeheim, Mike Krzyzewski, Geno Auriemma, Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp.