Lady Bulldog Basketball
Georgia vs. Alabama
2010 SEC Tournament First Round
Thursday, March 4 at 9:00 p.m.
Arena at Gwinnett Center (10,309) in Duluth, Ga.
TV: FOX Sports South
Radio: AM 960 The Ref in Athens

The basics:
No. 24-ranked Georgia will trek 46.69 miles down Georgia Highway 316
(according to mapquest) from Stegeman Coliseum to the Arena at Gwinnett Center for this week¹s SEC Tournament. The Lady Dogs, who finished in a four-way tie for third in the league standings, enter the tourney as the No. 6 seed and face 11th-seeded Alabama in the first round on Thursday at 9:00 p.m.

Georgia raced to a school-record 16-0 start and a No. 6 national ranking in January before struggling somewhat down the stretch. The Lady Bulldogs dropped six of eight decisions before wrapping up the regular season with 16- and 21-point wins over South Carolina and Arkansas, respectively.

³I feel good about the way we played the last couple of games, no question about it,² Andy Landers said. ³I feel like our team is the healthiest it has been since the Tennessee game in mid-January. I think we¹ve shot the ball better than we¹ve shot it in a long time. I think our defense, which has never been bad, did slip a little bit. It looks like it¹s making amends. Overall, I like where we¹re at going into the SEC Tournament.²

Georgia is 5-2 all-time in games played at the Arena at Gwinnett, including a 1-1 mark at the 2007 SEC Tournament.

Series history vs. the Tide
The Lady Bulldogs are 30-9 all-time against Alabama, a tally that includes a 6-1 mark in SEC Tournament matchups.

Georgia has won 17 straight in the series, last losing in 1998 when Coco and Kelly Miller were freshmen.

The Lady Bulldogs swept on a home-and-home series during the regular season. Georgia won 52-44 on Jan. 3 in Tuscaloosa in both teams¹ SEC opener and then topped the Tide 76-47 on Valentine¹s Day in Athens.

Ashley Houts scored 14 points and Porsha Phillips grabbed 17 rebounds ­ the most by a Lady Bulldog in SEC play since 1996 ­ to lead Georgia in the January meeting.

After trailing by 10 at halftime, Georgia exploded on a 15-0 run to start
the second stanza. The Lady Bulldogs gained their first lead of the day on a short jumper from Angel Robinson at the 11:45 mark and held the Crimson Tide scoreless for the first 10:27 of the half.

³We came out in the second half and defensively we were very, very good,² Andy Landers said. ³We were able to give ourselves a chance to climb back into it before they could score. The way we played in the second half put some smiles back on faces.²

In the rematch in Athens, Georgia sank a season-high 12 three-pointers ­ six of which came from Houts ­ on its way to a convincing win over Alabama.

The dozen threes came within one of the Lady Bulldogs¹ single-game record.

The win secured Georgia¹s 25th 20-win campaign under Andy Landers in his 31 seasons in Athens.

Houts led all scorers with 24, while Porsha Phillips and Jasmine James
joined her in double figures with 13 and 12 points, respectively. Jasmine
Hassell posted a career-high 12 rebounds and added nine points. Meredith Mitchell tallied 10 rebounds and eight points.

³Everybody played well today ­ there were a lot of things that were
impressive,² Landers said. ³We can start with Ashley and ŒJJ¹ knocking down the threes. That certainly changed the way this game was played. There were a lot of good things, and everybody on our team should be very pleased with the way they played and contributed.²

Houts tallied 11 points in the first 5:19 as the Lady Bulldogs raced to a
13-3 lead and never looked back. After Alabama pulled within 13 early in the second half, the Lady Bulldogs quickly built back a 20-point lead.

In the most recent SEC Tournament meeting two years ago, Houts¹ 15 points paced Georgia in a 71-62 first-round win.

After three ties and eight lead changes in the first half, the Lady Bulldogs gradually built a 58-44 margin with 7:26 left. Alabama pulled within nine points with 90 seconds left but Georgia hit 6-of-8 free throws to ice it.

UGA¹s SEC Tournament history
The Lady Bulldogs sport a 41-26 (.612) all-time record in Southeastern
Conference Tournament action. FYI, the SEC lists UGA as 39-26...we recognize a couple consolation wins in 1981 and 1982 missing from their totals.

Georgia has won four SEC Tournament titles, doing so in 1983, ¹84, ¹86 and 2001.

The Lady Bulldogs are the No. 6 seed for the second time, previously
advancing to the 1988 semifinals from the same slot in the bracket. That
year, Georgia defeated fifth-seeded Vanderbilt, 79-72, before falling to
top-seeded Tennessee, 73-54.

Georgia is 6-1 in first-round games of the SEC Tournament, falling only to 12th-seeded Ole Miss in 1998.

UGA¹s record versus each league school in SEC Tourney play can be found in the next column.

Georgia in the SEC Tourney
School Record Last
Alabama 6-1 W, 71-62 in ¹08 1st Round
Arkansas 3-0 W, 63-44 in ¹01 Semis
Auburn 2-3 L, 47-75 in ¹97 Quarters
Florida 2-0 W, 76-72 in ¹04 Quarters
Kentucky 6-1 W, 82-64 in ¹09 1st Round
LSU 5-3 L, 65-79 in ¹05 Semis
Ole Miss 6-3 W, 87-65 in ¹05 Quarters
Miss. St. 1-1 L, 61-62 in ¹00 Semis
S. Carolina 1-0 W, 73-42 in ¹04 1st Round
Tennessee 3-8 L, 79-89 in ¹06 Semis
Vanderbilt 6-6 L, 61-69 in ¹09 Quarters

Last time out...
Ashley Houts finished with 15 points in her final game at Stegeman Coliseum to lead Georgia to a 69-48 win over Arkansas.

Houts was 5-of-9, including 3-of-5 from beyond the three-point arc. Jasmine Hassell added 13 points on matching 5-of-9 shooting, and Porsha Phillips hauled in a game-high 11 rebounds.

³I was pleased with our performance late in the second half and particularly after the way we started the half,² Andy Landers said. ³We gave up 23 points in the first half and then gave up seven in 3:30 in the second. We called a timeout and got that straightened out. From that point on, we were very, very good. We slammed the door on them defensively. Different people stepped up, I thought (Anne Marie) Armstrong made good decisions and knocked down some good shots. Hassell was very, very good. Angel scored a couple late, hit her free throws.

³Just a lot of people playing well.²

Georgia kept Arkansas off the scoreboard through the first 8:27 while
building a 12-0 lead. Arkansas scored six straight to chop the Georgia lead in half, but the Lady Bulldogs scored eight of the next nine and the
Razorbacks never pulled as close again.

A 6-0 second-half Georgia run ballooned the advantage to 18, the largest to that point, at 58-40 with 7:09 left. The lead eventually topped out at 23 with 1:59 remaining.

Some significant change
Georgia entered this season with a theme of ³change² on its minds...and t-shirts. The Lady Bulldogs, one of the nation¹s premier programs since the early-80s, haven¹t lived up to those lofty standards of late.

³Where we¹ve been lately from a competitive standpoint and from a success standpoint isn¹t where we want to be,² Andy Landers said in the pre-season. ³Expectations run high for myself. I know that we haven¹t met my expectations.²

³I think sometimes, if a guy¹s a millionaire, he doesn¹t think about going
down to the bank and taking out $50 or $500 or $50,000. The thing is full of money as far as he¹s concerned,² Landers said. ³In the past four or five years...the investment and the deposits haven¹t been made. But we¹ve continued to live like millionaires. We just keep making withdrawals. That¹s not the way this works.²

So the youthful Lady Bulldogs with six freshmen in tow invested themselves into returning Georgia to its glory days. Things like what happened this Monday when the AP top-25 poll was released. Those rankings included a quiet but significant shift among the nation¹s powerhouse programs.

As confirmed by AP women¹s hoops guru Mel Greenberg, the Lady Bulldogs moved past Louisiana Tech to become the second-most ranked team in the history of the AP poll. Georgia has now been included in 448 weekly editions of the rankings, one more than the Lady Techsters.

³First of all, to be the second-most ranked basketball team in
America...ever...according to the Associated Press, means there¹s only one team that has been consistently in the top-25 more than you have,² Andy Landers said. ³That¹s a great statement on behalf of the present team and all those former teams and players who have ever played at the University of Georgia.²

Georgia earned its first-ever AP ranking in the pre-season poll prior to the 1981-82 campaign, five seasons after the poll originally began.