Feb. 13, 2011
Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery
ATLANTA – Prior to Sunday night’s Georgia Tech women’s basketball game against NC State, head coach MaChelle Joseph shook up her starting lineup.
The results paid off as the Jackets claimed a 74-65 win over visiting NC State at Alexander Memorial Coliseum to snap a three-game losing streak. With the win, Tech improved to 19-8 and 7-4 in the ACC, while the Wolfpack dropped to 10-15 and 1-9 in league play.
“We’re really happy to get the win today,” Joseph said. “I was really proud of the way our team came out and played really hard on both ends, offensively and defensively. I was very impressed with Alex’s aggressiveness on both ends of the floor. I thought she played extremely hard and got a lot of hustle points. She made a lot of big plays for us.”
Senior Alex Montgomery came off the bench for the first time all season to lead the Jackets with her ninth double-double of the year with 26 points and 12 rebounds. The 26 points were two off of Montgomery’s career high and marked the 14th game of her career where she has tallied at least 20 points.
Freshman Tyaunna Marshall tossed in 12 points, while senior Deja Foster added 12 points and nine rebounds. Junior center Sasha Goodlett also came off the bench, only the second time this season Goodlett hasn’t started, and added eight points and 10 boards.
The Jackets started off slow and NC State raced out to an 8-0 lead on a Marissa Kastanek bucket in the paint before the first media timeout. After the Wolfpack went up 13-7 on a Kody Burke jumper at the 12:53 mark, Tech reeled off a 10-0 run, capped by a Foster jumper.
An NC State three put the Pack back up 20-17 at 6:33 before the Jackets ran off another 10 straight points, finished by a Montgomery fastbreak layup. Over that final 6:33 of the first half, Tech ripped off a 14-2 run to send the Jackets to intermission with a 31-22 lead.
“Like we said at halftime, we missed 15 layups and the next 15 are going to go in,” Joseph said. “I felt like we had a good start to the second half, and we got some quality minutes out of Nisha Adams, Dawnn Maye and Chelsea Regins.”
Tech didn’t slow up to begin the second half, extending its lead to as many as 24 points on a LaQuananisha Adams layup with 9:56 to play, putting the Jackets up 62-38. The Pack continued to fight and whittled the Tech lead down to eight with 1:12 left, but weren’t able to get any closer.
“For us, it’s really important that we continue to improve,” Joseph added. “We talked about coming into tonight, this is a new season. We have four games left and three of the four are at home. We can’t control what happened in the past, but we can control what happens in the next four games. We have a tremendous opportunity. We’re setting our sights on these next three games after tonight, then the ACC tournament and then the NCAA tournament. We can focus on getting better and moving forward. Our next opponent is Clemson and that’s what we’re going to focus on.
The Jackets are back in action on Thursday night when the Clemson Lady Tigers visit the AMC for a 7 p.m. ACC tilt. Tickets are available at RamblinWreck.com or by calling 1-888-Tech-Tix. For more information, visit RamblinWreck.com or follow us on Twitter, @GTWBB.
— RamblinWreck.com —
