Thirty-five seasons of coaching women’s basketball at Georgia, and Andy Landers had always said no. He liked spending his summers in Athens, with family, and at close range to his players in summer school. It took all of two days at a USA Basketball summer event one time for him to declare never again.
But when his assistant coaches brought up the idea of taking the team on a trip to Italy this August, he caved.
“My assistants caught me in a weak moment and talked me into it — that it would be good for recruiting,” Landers said. “What I didn’t know was how good it would be for our kids. It was a trip of a lifetime for me, for them.”
Together the Lady Dogs and their coaching staff spent 10 days touring some of the most famous sites in Italy, from the ancient ruins of the Colisseum in Rome to Vatican City, from Juliet’s balcony to the leaning tower of Pisa. They took gondola rides in Venice and gazed at Michelangelo’s David. And they wrapped it all up with a boat ride across the lovely Lake Como, where they got just a glimpse of George Clooney’s house.
“You couldn’t get too close to it because there was a fine for it,” senior forward Krista Donald said. “Like a thousand euros, if you get to close to it.”
Donald is from Lake, Miss., a town of 1,000 people. Until the Italy trip the farthest she had traveled was to Spokane, Wash., where the Lady Bulldogs played in the 2013 NCAA tournament. She quickly earned the reputation for being the last of the Lady Bulldogs to get back on the bus at every stop during their Italy tour.
“It was amazing,” Donald said. “Everything was breathtaking — the monuments, just the architecture was different. I can’t even describe it. It was so surreal, the whole experience was just awesome.”
And yes, they also played basketball. The Lady Bulldogs played three games against Italian teams and won all three, by an average of 34 points per game. The games turned out to be like any another stop on the tour. The team got to lay out by a beach on the morning of one of their games. They didn’t have to bother with having practice — which had to be another first for Landers.
Their coach got swept up in the joy of the trip too, and found a new love — gelato.
“No kidding, I probably ate two gallons of that stuff in 12-14 days,” Landers said. “I may have eaten more than that. I love ice cream, but that gelato is off the chart. That stuff is illegal. It’s the best. I like pineapple. I like banana. I didn’t find anything I didn’t like.”
The trip was about enjoying the fruits of their labor, soaking up some culture and getting to know each other. Georgia was granted an additional 10 practices leading to the trip, which gave freshman an early start on learning the speed of the game, as well as their new teammates.
“I wish my freshmen year I got to have the Italy practices before the season started to get a feel for how everything was going to go,” junior guard Shacobia Barbee said. “I think that was really beneficial for them as well as the upperclassmen coming back and refreshing our memory, so we don’t have to go over it as much in practice now. And just for them getting a feel for how we all play together. I think we have a better connection with each other now by having those extra practices.”
Georgia is still a fairly young team, and will open the season Friday against at home against Morgan State, with nine of its 16 players still freshmen and sophomores. The Lady Bulldogs have six newcomers, including four freshmen and two transfers.
They will use their head start to try to bounce back from last season’s first-round loss in the NCAA tournament, which was a major disappointment by Landers’ standards.
But about the whole Italy exhibition tour thing? He’s a believer now.
“It was absolutely wonderful being able to go and tour and spend time every day with each other,” Landers said. “I sense we have a team that cares about each other, that will fight for each other, a team that it would be very easy for everybody to get on the right page, the same page.”
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