Nov. 4, 2002
ATLANTA — The Georgia Tech women’s basketball team will play its only exhibition game of the 2002-03 season on Thursday night when it hosts the Premier Players at the Georgia Dome at 7 p.m. The Yellow Jackets will then make their final public appearance prior to the start of the regular season by taking part in the annual HoopsFest activities on Friday night at 7 p.m. at Alexander Memorial Coliseum.
The Jackets’ exhibition game with the Premier Players will serve multiple purposes. It will not only serve as Tech’s only test against outside competition prior to opening play in the Preseason WNIT, but will also serve as a test game for the Georgia Dome’s preparations for the 2003 Women’s Final Four in April. Admission for the game will be $4 for adults and $2 for students.
HoopsFest will feature both Tech’s men’s and women’s teams. Both squads will scrimmage before being available for autographs and photos. Admission is free, and there will be contests and games for fans in attendance, including free Georgia Tech basketball t-shirts for the first 150 fans in attendance.
Tech will get a good gauge of its progress in the preseason as the Premier Players’ roster is filled with former college standouts as well as a number of current WNBA players. Faces that will be familiar to Yellow Jacket fans include former ACC standouts Juana Brown (North Carolina), March? Strickland (Maryland) and Tynesha Lewis (NC State), who currently plays for the WNBA’s Houston Comets. Former Georgia Bulldog and current Sacramento Monarch La’Keshia Frett is also part of the roster. The team is scheduled to play 15 exhibition games during the month of November against college teams up and down the East Coast.
Georgia Tech returns three starters from a year ago, off of a team that finished with a 15-14 record and made a third-straight postseason appearance in the WNIT. Included in that group are seniors Nina B?rlin and Sonja Mallory, along with junior Fallon Stokes. Mallory was a second-team All-ACC selection a year ago, while B?rlin earned honorable mention all-conference honors, despite missing the team’s final 12 games with a knee injury. The Jackets also welcome back five other letterwinners from the 2001-02 season.
The game will also mark the collegiate debut of the Yellow Jackets’ eight-member freshman class. The group, which has been ranked among the top classes in the nation entering the 2002-03 season is headlined by WBCA and McDonald’s High School All-American Kasha Terry (Douglasville, Ga.). Terry is joined by Ashley Guerrant (East Lansing, Mich.), Megan Harpring (Duluth, Ga.), April Johnson (Macon, Ga.), Cheytoria Phillips (Raleigh, N.C.), Kaylin Wells (Marietta, Ga.), Jessica Williams (Riverdale, Ga.) and Mallorie Winn (San Diego, Calif.).
The Jackets will open the 2002-03 campaign on Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. with a home game against Charlotte in the first round of the Preseason WNIT. The winner of that contest will advance to face the winner of the match-up between Ball State and Kansas State at a site to be determined on Nov. 17.
