For Georgia Tech, there is no time to dwell on what could have been, no time to wallow in perhaps what should have been.
Instead, the Yellow Jackets (22-6) have decided their outlook will be one of pride and gratefulness. They are, after all, one of only 64 teams still fighting for a national title in an NCAA tournament that starts Thursday.
“I think that when you get to this point, only one team is gonna be the champion, and you gotta earn your way every night that you step on the court and compete,” Tech coach Michelle Collier said. “I think that’s what we’re focusing on.
“We accomplished our goal which was to put ourselves in the best position possible. That’s what we earned by what we did in the season, and so now we have to go out there and compete with whatever the pathway is that takes us. It starts on Thursday, and then we’ll go from there.”
Collier’s team, in the postseason for the fifth year in a row and in the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in five seasons, heads to Gainesville, Florida, on Wednesday ahead of its opening match at 4:30 p.m. Thursday against South Alabama. The Jackets enter the event on a bit of a downward trend having lost three of their four final matches of the regular season.
That stretch likely cost 12th-ranked Tech a chance to host the first round of the tournament despite 22 wins and a 13-1 start to the season. Now the Jackets, seeded fifth, have to survive a pod that includes South Alabama (22-8), Florida Gulf Coast (26-6) and No. 4-seed Florida (18-9).
The winner of this weekend’s Gainesville regional has the very real possibility of having to go against No. 1 seed and top-ranked Nebraska in the next round.
“To be in this position, as hard as it is to not be hosting, I think it also says a lot about what we’ve been doing and where we’re getting ourselves out there,” Collier said. “We’re gonna get closer and closer to the next steps that we want for this program. I think that we’ve done that over the last three years. It’s hard to be in this position again, but we don’t have time to dwell on this too much. We gotta move forward and think about the next game.”
Tech and South Alabama met this season in a match nearly three months ago in Tallahassee, Florida. It was there that the Jackets won 3-0 on the campus of Florida A&M. Tamara Otene had 15 kills and 14 digs in that victory, Liv Mogridge had 11 kills and four blocks and Bella D’amico had 27 assists and 10 digs.
The Jaguars went 16-6 after that loss to Tech and earned an at-large bid into the field after going 12-4 in the Sun Belt Conference and falling in the SBC tournament semifinals. Hannah Maddux has a team-high 423 kills for South Alabama, and Kailey Keeble has more than 1,100 assists.
South led the Sun Belt in digs per set and opponent hitting percentage.
“Just a team that is really well-coached. They understand what it’s like to compete at a high level,” Collier said. “The Sun Belt had a great conference. There’s a lot of teams that made a lot of noise and sustained success this season. They definitely earned their position that they’re in.
“I think that we’ve seen through the years that it’s anybody’s night on that court. We’re gonna do the things that we can control in our gym to get better and to get ready for a great match on Thursday.”
Tech went 1-1 in the 2022 NCAA tournament, 3-1 in the 2021 event and 1-1 in 2020 (a postseason which was played in the spring of 2021). A fourth consecutive year with a victory would advance the Jackets into 7 p.m. Friday match against the Florida-Florida Gulf Coast winner.
“I’m very excited, obviously. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished this year,” Tech senior libero Paola Pimentel said. “We had some great matches. It was hard, we knew it was gonna be, we had a tough schedule. ACC is pretty hard this year. But I’m very proud of how we compete every time we step on the court. As my last season, I just wanna give it all on the court. I’m really excited to just go play hard. Right now that’s all we can control. We’re gonna go play our best one day at time.
“We don’t know what’s gonna happen at night. It’s anyone’s night, everyone can win at this point of the season. I’m just excited to go against the playoffs because it’s a great time of the year to just be competing at a high level.”
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