On Tuesday morning, Georgia Tech forward Lorela Cubaj was named the ACC’s defensive co-player of the year. The news made for a pleasant wake-up call.
“I woke up to a lot of messages, was basically how I found out,” Cubaj said in an interview with the AJC.
Cubaj was joined by Yellow Jackets guard Lotta-Maj Lahtinen (most improved player) and coach Nell Fortner (voted coach of the year by media). No Tech player or coach had ever earned those awards. It continued a season of developments marking the progress made by Tech in Fortner’s second season. The next will be the Jackets’ push to the ACC championship, beginning Friday evening in Greensboro, N.C.
As the No. 3 seed, Tech will play the winner of Thursday night’s winner between No. 6-seed Notre Dame and No. 11-seed Clemson. The third seed also is a program first; the highest it had been previously seeded was fourth.
“There’s a lot of special things that have happened since I’ve been here,” Fortner said. “These kids, they’re a resilient bunch of young women, and they compete hard and they work hard every day.”
In the preseason, Tech was picked to finish fifth in the ACC by the league’s coaches and ninth by media. The Jackets finished the regular season 14-7 overall and 12-6 in the conference, tying the team record for ACC wins in a season initially set in 2012, when the league season was 16 games.
As Cubaj sees it, a strength of her team is its selflessness, demonstrated in players not caring who gets the shots and in its unity on defense.
“We want to succeed,” said Cubaj, who led the ACC in rebounding and was named first-team all-conference. “We don’t care who’s scoring. We’re really unselfish from that point of view.”
Her response to being co-defensive player of the year exemplifies it.
“Honestly, I think that, without my teammates, I wouldn’t be able to perform as well,” she said. “I just feel like that made me feel really comfortable about my game. The chemistry we have on the court is so good. It makes everybody better.”
To Fortner, that cohesion likely has been a product of the team’s response to the pandemic.
“They’ve probably become a tighter-knit bunch because they hang out together so much,” Fortner said. “We encourage that because we don’t want them out hanging out with other people during this point in time. So I think that’s helped as far as team chemistry goes.”
Whether it’s hanging out in the locker room or watching movies together at a team member’s apartment (usually senior guard Kierra Fletcher’s), it’s a group that enjoys being together. That commitment to limiting interaction with large groups of people and adhering to other health protocols evidently has been beneficial.
In December, Tech did postpone one league game (Miami) and a non-conference game against Central Florida when it went on a pause because of COVID-19 protocols within the team. (The former was made up, but not the latter.) However, the Jackets played 18 of their 20 league games, which was tied for most with Miami and Wake Forest.
“I actually want to give us a shoutout because everybody took care of business,” Cubaj said. “Everybody made sure we were all safe and everybody in the bubble was safe. I’m happy we got to complete the regular season. We never knew because COVID is really unpredictable, but I’m just glad that we were able to complete the regular season.”
As for the ACC tournament, Louisville and N.C. State appear to be solid favorites. They’re the only two ACC teams in the Top 25, and the Wolfpack are No. 3 and the Cardinals are No. 5.
Tech is in a bit of a recovery, having lost two of its past three games.
“I think we were playing some really good basketball, and we’ve got to get back to that place,” Fortner said. “So I think that there’s still a huge amount of potential for how much better this team can get.”
