In a series that will document the Clean Old-Fashioned Hate rivalry between Georgia and Georgia Tech, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will report on every head-to-head matchups between the schools this year.
Mariana Brambilla may have joined Georgia Tech’s volleyball team from Brazil, but you don’t need to have grown up within state borders to pick up on the importance of the Tech-Georgia rivalry.
“It obviously is something really big here, because we want to be the team that can win everything in our state,” Brambilla, Tech’s All-American outside hitter, said in comments recorded by the Tech athletic department. “And also, since freshman year, we learned ‘What is the good word?’”
For Tech students, alumni and fans, the only proper response is, of course, “To hell with Georgia.” The call and response was undoubtedly echoing off the walls Saturday night in noisy O’Keefe Gymnasium, where the 18th-ranked Yellow Jackets completed a rigorous non-conference schedule with a 3-0 win over the Bulldogs before a sellout crowd of 1,200. It was the first head-to-head contest of the school year in the “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate” rivalry, a series that the AJC will chronicle beyond football, basketball and baseball.
“I think outside the locker room we talk about (how) it’s another match, we’ve got to go one point at a time,” Tech coach Michelle Collier told the AJC. “But definitely inside the locker room, there’s good talks about how much this means to our program, to our school, to everybody that’s connected with it. We know we say it’s just one game, but it’s the game.”
After eking out the first set 25-22, Tech (9-1) rolled through the next two sets 25-17, 25-12 for the win. Brambilla, a senior, led both teams with 17 kills.
“I was really excited for this game, especially because it’s Georgia,” Brambilla said.
Tech won its fourth match out of the past six against Georgia, and 18th of the past 22. Of the sports where the Jackets and Bulldogs compete head to head, it’s the one that Tech holds with the firmest grip by far. Given that, Collier said that she doesn’t feel added pressure to carry the banner for the athletic department, but is always happy to contribute a win over the Bulldogs.
“We’re starting the year the right way,” Collier said. “Hopefully everybody else follows suit now.”
After losing to the Bulldogs in Athens in 2019, Tech players had to wait two years for redemption. The 2020 match was not played because both the ACC and SEC adopted conference-only schedules.
“It’s very, very important, and I was just glad we got that one (Saturday),” Collier said.
Georgia (4-7) has lost six of its past seven games as it goes into SEC play.
“I thought the first set was really good volleyball and then, Georgia Tech, it was pretty lopsided from that point,” Bulldogs coach Tom Black said in post-match comments recorded by the UGA athletic department.
For Tech, the win over Georgia is but one of six wins over power-conference opponents in non-conference play, most notably No. 20 Penn State. Collier’s team is trying to build off an NCAA Tournament appearance last spring, the team’s first since 2009. ACC play begins this Friday at Wake Forest.
“I think that our team can get so much better; that’s what’s really exciting,” Collier said. “We have won some great matches, we really challenged with our schedule this preseason, but we have yet to see everything that we can do.”
Georgia starts league play Wednesday at South Carolina.
“We’ve got the first match of conference coming up, and we need to compete better, and we have the potential to do that,” Black said.
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