Georgia Tech women’s basketball team is back in the NCAA Tournament. After their highest ACC finish in team history, the Yellow Jackets earned a No. 5 seed and will play No. 12 Stephen F. Austin in the first round on Sunday in San Antonio, Texas. The field was announced Monday evening.
It’s Tech’s first tournament appearance since 2014 and 10th overall. For all but one of the Jackets (guard Sarah Bates, who went to the tournament with Kansas State in 2019 before transferring, although she was sitting out the year as a transfer), it’s their first time in the NCAA tournament.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” senior guard Kierra Fletcher said. “This is what I’ve been working for since I stepped onto campus.”
It is a particularly meaningful achievement for Fletcher and senior Lorela Cubaj in reaching the tournament as seniors. The two and other players also endured the rocky transition from former coach MaChelle Joseph, who was fired in March 2019 in the wake of findings of bullying and mental, emotional and verbal abuse. Then shortly after the hire of coach Nell Fortner that April, two of the team’s best players, Elizabeth Balogun and Elizabeth Dixon, transferred to Louisville.
“I think it’s night and day from my first two years here and my last two years I’ve been here,” Fletcher said. “We’ve always had talented teams. I just think we underperformed my first two years. And with the new coaching staff and that transition, I think our talent really showed just because we had a different culture, rebuild and I think that helped us a lot these past two years.”
“For the seniors, yeah, this is why you go to college, to play in the NCAA Tournament, and now they’re going to get their opportunity,” Fortner said.
In her second season at Tech, Fortner has led a team that was picked ninth in the ACC by media (fifth by coaches) into the field of 64. The Jackets finished last season 20-11 and had perhaps an outside chance of making the tournament before it was cancelled due to COVID-19. Fletcher remembers a 65-61 loss at then-No. 4 N.C. State last season that gave her belief in what could be.
“I think right there, that’s when we knew that we could be one of the top teams in the country,” Fletcher said, a four-year starter who is second on the team in scoring at 12.9 points per game. “And this year again, we’re right there, just playing with all of these teams and we’ve never stopped fighting.”
The Jackets are 15-8 and were 12-6 in the ACC, good for third place, the highest the team has ever placed in the conference.
The berth adds a noteworthy sentence to the biography of Fortner, who was hired at Tech in April 2019 following a seven-year run at ESPN as a commentator.
Tech is now the third team that she has led to the NCAA Tournament, following a combined three berths at Purdue and Auburn in a total of nine seasons. She was named ACC coach of the year at the end of the regular season in the media vote.
“We love coach Nell,” Fletcher said. “I think it’s very telling when we’re out there on the court that we’re playing for her. She’s a very exciting coach to play for. She just has a lot of energy, day in and day out, and the things that she’s been able to do in her first two seasons with us I think says a lot, and we’re just very excited. She’s super excited for us and she’s great.”
Stephen F. Austin, the Southland Conference champion, is 24-2 and has won its past 19 games. Notably, the Ladyjacks won at Auburn in December, although the Tigers finished 5-19. Fortner actually got her college coaching career started at Stephen F. Austin, located in Nacogdoches, Texas, as a graduate assistant in 1986. She was hired on as an assistant coach after one season and remained another three seasons.
Before the start of the season, Stephen F. Austin ranked seventh among all Division I schools in victories, sharing the top 10 with traditional powerhouses like Tennessee, Connecticut, Louisiana Tech, Stanford and Texas. The team has made 18 NCAA Tournament appearances, the last (before this year) in 2006. Three of those appearances were during Fortner’s stay.
“It has great women’s basketball history,” Fortner said. “So the tradition there is to win and to get to the NCAA tournament, and so they’ve returned there this season.”
The game will tip off at 4:30 p.m. and be broadcast on ESPNU.
Tech is led by Cubaj, named the ACC’s defensive co-player of the year, and guard Lotta-Maj Lahtinen, recognized as the ACC’s most improved player.
“Just really super proud of these players and their hard work and their belief and what we’ve accomplished this season so far,” Fortner said. “There’s been goals set and we’re seeing some of those goals come to fruition. And we’re not finished yet.”
If the Jackets advance to the second round, they’ll face the winner of No. 4 seed West Virginia and No. 13 seed Lehigh. West Virginia is 21-6, finished second in the Big 12 behind Baylor and reached the conference championship game.
The No. 1 seed in the region is SEC champion South Carolina, which is 22-4 and ranked No. 6 in the AP top 25 poll.
The entire tournament will be played in and near San Antonio, Texas. Fortner recognized that, with a team of NCAA newbies, nerves may be a part of the experience.
“We’ll do our best to help them through that,” she said. “Because once that ball goes up, nerves have to go out the window. When that ball goes up, it’s time to play.”
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