One year after Arizona State came to Georgia and ended the Lady Bulldogs' basketball season, Georgia is headed to Tempe, Ariz., to start the NCAA tournament. But there will be no Sun Devils to be found.
No. 5 seed Georgia will play No. 12 seed Tulane (26-6, 15-4), the Conference USA champion, in the first round at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. This is the Green Wave's first NCAA tournament appearance eight years.
It was a bit different this season for the Lady Dogs, assured by a 23-8 record they would get into the tournament somewhere when Selection Monday began. Last year's selections, after the team went 18-14, came with no little drama.
"Last year, we didn't have a good feeling about a lot of things," Georgia senior guard Ashley Houts said. "The fact that we had played ourselves, where we had left our fate up to somebody else's hands, was very uneasy. We've messed up this year but fortunately, we put ourselves in a position where we can hopefully be successful in the tournament."
Likewise, sophomore Meredith Mitchell remembers last season well and was glad the team may be starting to turn the corner at the right time.
"We're definitely more excited and more motivated to play," Mitchell said. " ... We got our momentum back. I just think that we're almost back to where we needed to be."
After some mid-season struggles, Georgia's three straight wins through the first round of the SEC tournament was enough to let the Lady Bulldogs hang onto a solid seed. Georgia coach Andy Landers has suggested earlier that he expected something between a No. 5 and 8 seed.
The No. 5 is Georgia's highest seed since 2007, which was the fifth straight season the Lady Dogs had been a 6 seed or better.
To make it into the second round after a one-year absence, Georgia will have to beat a Tulane team that is rated No. 43 at CollegeRPI.com and that took LSU into overtime before losing 73-65 in November.
As important as getting past Tulane would be reverting to the way the team played during its 18-1 start to the season. But Landers said he isn't satisfied with that.
"That form is not what we're after," he said. "I think we're looking for something a little bit more than that. I think we're capable of finding it."
The biggest break in the seeding for the Lady Bulldogs may have been that they ended up in a different region from Connecticut, which is riding a women's basketball record 72-game winning streak. Stanford is the No. 1 seed in Georgia's bracket, which will send the Lady Dogs to Sacramento, Calif., should they advance to the Sweet 16.
Georgia has never played Tulane. The Lady Bulldogs have a potential second-round matchup with No. 4 seed Oklahoma State, whom UGA beat 83-55 in Athens when they played in 1996. Georgia has been to 27 of of the last 29 NCAA tournaments, ranking second all-time only to Tennessee, which has been to all 29.
The first NCAA tournament game in Lady Bulldog history was played in Tempe in 1982 against Arizona State. The Sun Devils won 97-77.
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