Nov. 22, 2011
Duluth, Ga. – The Georgia Tech women’s basketball team improved to 4-0 with a 94-51 win over the Kennesaw State Lady Owls (2-2) Tuesday night at the Arena at Gwinnett Center.
For the three games the Yellow Jackets have played on this year’s home court, they are averaging nearly 93 points and have won by an average of 44.7 points per game.
Junior Danielle Hamilton-Carter paced Georgia Tech with 14 points and 10 rebounds, both of which were career highs and gave the Stockholm, Sweden, native her first career double-double. Sophomore Tyaunna Marshall tied Hamilton-Carter for team high honors with 14 points and freshman Tjasa Gortnar added 10 points on 4-of-7 shooting off the bench.
“I’m pleased with the balance we had on the offensive end, inside and outside, it was a great opportunity for us to play a lot of people,” head coach MaChelle Joseph said. “I really felt like we did a good job of getting the ball inside, that was a goal for this game, and controlling the boards. We did see some improvement in our press as we had an opportunity to play a lot of people and see some different combinations.”
In similar fashion as their first two games at the Arena at Gwinnett Center, the Yellow Jackets began the contest with the Lady Owls red-hot, racing out to an 8-0 lead barely four minutes into the contest.
Kennesaw State tallied a couple of quick baskets of their own, pulling the score to 13-9 in favor of Tech, but the Jackets answered with a 15-5 run, making the score 28-14 with eight minutes to play in the first half. The Tech offense didn’t slow down there and outscored the Lady Owls 23-11 to take a 51-25 lead into the halftime break.
The 51 points were the most Georgia Tech has scored in the first half this season and the most since scoring 51 in the opening 20 minutes against Mercer on Dec. 28, 2010.
Tech began the final 20 minutes right where it left off ending the first, holding the Lady Owls without a field goal for the first eight-plus minutes and running the score to 69-30.
“I thought we did a much better job of pushing the ball in transition and we’ve been able to get easy shots in the first four games we’ve played,” Joseph said.
With the game in hand, Joseph was able to get quality minutes from her bench as Tech cruised to the win. All 12 available players plus freshman Sarah Hartwell, who Joseph had planned on redshirting, each played at least eight minutes with no one on the Tech roster logging more than 25 minutes.
The Jackets will face a stiff working holiday test this weekend as they face the No. 13/13 Rutgers Scarlet Knights (3-0) Friday and the No. RV/18 Green Bay Phoenix Saturday in the San Juan Shootout in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Both games will begin at 5:30 p.m. ET and can be heard on WREK 91.1 FM and RamblinWreck.com.
“We have a big week ahead of us,” Joseph said. “We go to play Rutgers and Green Bay, then we come home and play Nebraska. We’ve got our work cut out for us, it’s going to be a tough week ahead. You get to go on a trip like San Juan and you get excited about it and you start to look ahead instead of taking care of what’s in front of you. That’s one of the things I was really emphasizing over the past couple days because I felt like Kennesaw State was much improved in what I’d seen.”
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