| Athens Banner-Herald
A school that has been a regular in the women’s basketball ranking for three decades has returned to the top 25 of the top two polls this week for the first time in more than two years.
They weren’t doing pirouettes about it in Georgia offices and in gymnastics.
“It’s like checking the box, the next thing and keep going up,” said coach Joni Taylor, “because there are still a lot of boxes we have to check.”
Taylor reminded his players on Sunday, after the program’s first victory in Tennessee since 1996, that the Lady Bulldogs are still climbing the mountain.
“Honestly, I don’t think we’re done yet and I don’t think a ranking shows that we’re done,” said senior central Jenna Staiti. “We still have a lot to prove and show people.”
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A program that Hall of Fame coach Andy Landers has built that boasts 33 NCAA tournament appearances and five Final Fours is set to be set in March, not in January.
So ranking 22nd in the Associated Press poll and 23rd in the USA Today coaches poll is great and elegant, but it’s not the end of it.
“It’s good for the show,” said Taylor. “It’s great for our ex-Lady Bulldogs, who were constantly classified. It means that we are doing something right, but we will not waste time talking about it ”.
When Landers retired in 2015, Georgia ranked second nationally in the weeks ranked in the AP poll, with 522.
So when you return, there is still something to be proud of.
Georgia is ranked this week for the first time since November 2018.
“It’s important to me, this is my home state, this is where I come from,” said Staiti, a fifth year transfer from Maryland who was Player of the Year Gatorade Georgia at West Forsyth High School. “Putting Georgia back on the map and where we should be and keeping up with the standard in which Georgia basketball should be played is important to me. I know that for this team, the past few years have not been what we wanted. I think that building as we did this year creates a great foundation for what is to come. “
Georgia (12-1, 4-1 SEC) will be put to the test immediately as a qualified team when playing in No. 3 South Carolina (10-1, 5-0) on Thursday at 6:30 pm and No. 17 Arkansas Monday in Athens.
“We just need to be focused and locked in every game,” said Staiti. “We have a lot of great opportunities coming up, especially in the SEC game.”
Landers hired Taylor, a former Alabama player, of the LSU team in 2011 as an assistant coach. She was elevated to succeed him when he retired after 36 seasons.
Under Taylor, Georgia reached the NCAA tournament in two of its first four seasons, reaching the second round in 2018 when the team had 26-7, but dropped to 17-14 last season before the pandemic ended it before the post. -season.
“We are beginning to discover how to win and how to win the games we need to win,” said Staiti.
Taylor tells recruits that she wants them to help bring the program back to prominence.
She has clung to a vision that is producing the desired results now.
“We are in the sixth year and that seems like a long time, but in the recruitment cycle it is not a long time,” said Taylor. “We just continue to be intentional about who we brought into this program. We knew how we wanted it to be and we were not satisfied with anything else. ”
Georgia does not have a player ranked in the top 20 in the SEC in scoring or in the top 10 in rebounds, but it has depth and offensive firepower this year that Taylor has always wanted.
“Now it’s not on the shoulders of one or two people to carry the day for us,” said Taylor. “We have several options and when we replace, there is really no drop in terms of how our production is.”
The 1.80m Staiti leads the team with 14.2 points and 7.4 rebounds per game.
“We just have a lot of people who can make an impact on the game,” said Staiti. “You don’t know whose night it will be. It could be anyone’s night. We have so many weapons, so many things to shoot at people. “
Senior guard Que Morrison leads the team with 3.8 assists and 2.1 steals, accumulating 9.8 points per game. Gabby Connally, another senior guard, has a team of 25 points out of 3 points and an average of 10.8 points per game.
Sarah Ashlee Barker was named on Tuesday as the SEC’s freshman of the week, after scoring 11 points out of 4 out of 8 shots against Ole Miss, the team’s fourth straight win.
Yolett McPhee-McCuin, Ole Miss’s trainer, called Georgia “a well-oiled machine. They are very mature. You can see when they play. “
That maturity may be the reason why Lady Bulldogs thrived during this season in a pandemic.
The South Carolina game was originally scheduled for January 7, but was postponed on the morning of the game due to a positive test, contact tracking and quarantine on the Gamecocks program.
Georgia has not yet stopped its activities on its program.
“They handled it well, they didn’t hesitate about anything we asked them to do or not to do,” said Taylor.
South Carolina won the national title in 2017 and was 32-1 when the last season ended. Georgia lost by just 8 in their last game in Columbia in 2019, but lost last season to the Gamecocks by 88-53 in Athens and 89-56 in the SEC tournament.
In fact, research shows that Georgia is below the NCAA’s Net ranking.
Georgia is in 13th place.
ESPN’s Charlie Crème projects the Lady Bulldogs as the fourth seed.
“We didn’t do anything,” said Taylor. “This is my message to my team. What did we do? Won a game or two here or there. “
Taylor then referred to the inspirational quote she shared with the team.
“They say that the wolf that has climbed the mountain is never as hungry as the wolf that is still climbing the mountain,” said Taylor. “Let’s make sure that we are still climbing the mountain.”