Feb. 17, 2011
ATLANTA – The Georgia Tech women’s basketball notched its fifth straight 20 win season with a 72-46 victory over the visiting Clemson Lady Tigers on Thursday night at Alexander Memorial Coliseum.
With the win, Tech improves to 20-8 overall and 8-4 in ACC play. The loss drops Clemson to 10-17 and 3-9 in league play. The win also gave Tech its fourth straight regular season sweep of the Lady Tigers.
It is the eighth time in the history of the Jacket program the team has reached the 20 win plateau and the fifth in eight seasons under head coach MaChelle Joseph.
“I was really pleased with our defensive effort tonight,” head coach MaChelle Joseph said. “At halftime, we talked about needing to be more aggressive with our defense, and put more pressure on the ball. I thought we came out in the second half, really pressured, and were able to get some turnovers and easy baskets. I thought we were playing a little too passive offensively and defensively in the first half. Ty was sitting on the bench most of the first half with foul trouble and she’s a big part of what we do defensively.”
Both sides struggled in the first half and Tech took a 26-18 lead into the break. In the opening frame, the Jackets managed just a 33.3 percent shooting effort while the Lady Tigers mustered only 32 percent.
“One of the things we worked on the last two days was finishing in the pain and scoring with contact,” Joseph added. “We’ve done a lot of layup drills and a lot of layup drills with contact. I thought tonight all of our post players did a better job of finishing.”
Junior center Sasha Goodlett bounced back from a pair of tough shooting nights the past two outings to finish 6-of-8 from the field and scored a game-high 12 points. Senior Alex Montgomery tallied 11 points, five rebounds, three assists and three steals. Junior forward Chelsea Regins had another strong performance with 10 points and four rebounds.
“I think our focus and our effort are on point,” Joseph added. “We have two very tough games ahead of us. We need to control our own destiny and the only way we do that is to finish out the season strong. We talk about playing every possession. I think we have more of an urgency now and we understand how important wins against top 25 teams are and we need to get a couple to close out the season.”
The Jackets will now have a week off before traveling to Chapel Hill, N.C., to face the North Carolina Tar Heels at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24 in Carmichael Arena. For more information, please visit RamblinWreck.com or follow us on Twitter, @GTWBB, for instant updates.
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