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March 25, 2005 > Sports > Georgia routs Lady Owls in first round of NCAA tournament

Georgia routs Lady Owls in first round of NCAA tournament

By Amber Obermeyer | Thresher Editorial Staff

The women’s basketball team concluded its most successful season ever with a disappointing finish, losing in Dallas to the University of Georgia 75-49 in the first round of the NCAA tournament Saturday at Reunion Arena.

Georgia forward Tasha Humphrey, who was named national co-Freshman of the Year March 16 by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, scored the game’s first basket, but 11th-seeded Rice responded with a 9-0 run to take a 9-2 lead into the 16-minute media timeout. The sixth-seeded Bulldogs — aided by four Lady Owl turnovers — then scored the game’s next 16 points.

‘We came out, and we were ready,’ senior forward Michelle Woods said. ‘Then, like any other good team does, they came out and they pushed us. [But] we didn’t play the way we wanted to, and if we had, we might have been able to withstand some of their runs and maybe push back a little bit also.’

Georgia added nine more points off seven more Rice turnovers the rest of the half to take a 42-25 halftime lead and all but secure a spot in the second round of the NCAA tournament. ‘The bottom line is we got beat by a better team,’ head coach Cristy McKinney said. ‘What’s disappointing for us is that we didn’t compete like we’re capable of competing. We got off to a good start early, and they came back at us hard and we kind of got back on our heels. We became a little tentative and never got over that. We’re not a very good team when we’re tentative.’

Throughout the game, Georgia’s bigger post players controlled the lane, denying entry passes to the Lady Owls’ shorter and slighter frontcourt rotation of sophomore center Lauren Neaves, senior forward Annie Peck and Woods. The Bulldogs held Neaves, Woods and Peck to a combined 24 points, as compared to their season average of 31.6 points per game.

‘They were definitely a strong team, but I wouldn’t say I didn’t expect that,’ Woods said. ‘They were very physical at least in the post, and they looked quick out there on the perimeter. … After you get down, after you miss a few shots — I don’t know if it was confidence — but it just wasn’t there for us.’

Saturday’s NCAA tournament game was reminiscent of last year’s Western Athletic Conference championship game, when two-time defending WAC champion Louisiana Tech University used a combination of dominant post players and lightning-quick guards to handily defeat Rice 76-52 at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, Calif. In that game, future WNBA draftees Amisha Carter and Trina Frierson had 26 rebounds — the entire Rice team had 33 — while the Lady Techsters forced 29 Lady Owl turnovers.

Rice rebounded from that loss to defeat La. Tech by 20 points in this year’s WAC championship, and McKinney said she hopes her team has a chance to learn from this year’s NCAA tournament experience.

‘The key for us is to keep our program at a level where we can get back and we can use this experience,’ McKinney said. ‘I think we realized we’ve got to get stronger, that we’ve got to address the intensity level that you play with in this tournament. We do have a lot of young players — Lauren and [guard] Krystal [Frazier] are just sophomores ,and are two of our key kids. This was great for them, and hopefully will really help us in the future.’

Saturday’s loss completed the Lady Owls’ most successful season ever, as the team set a school record for wins with 24 despite opening the season 3-3. Rice also rebounded from losing its first two WAC games to capture its first-ever share of a regular-season conference championship, winning its last nine conference games to finish at 14-4, tied with La. Tech. ‘We definitely had a great season,’ Neaves said. ‘We got off to a little bit of a rough start, but we ended up finishing really strong. We have the most wins of any Rice team in history, we were co-champions of the regular season for the first time and we’re the WAC champions, so I’d say we finished out the regular season like we would have liked to.’ In the Lady Owls’ only other NCAA tournament appearance, in 2000, their four leading scorers, all seniors, accounted for 66 percent of the team’s scoring. The three seniors on this year’s team combined to score 32 percent of the team’s points and grab 36 percent of its rebounds. Rice also has five freshmen this year, all of whom appeared in at least 21 of the team’s 33 games.

‘The five freshmen have tremendous capabilities,’ Woods said. ‘They’ve even said to me, ‘Now we expect [to make the NCAA tournament].’ That’s something I can be proud of — knowing that the players that are going to stay behind have something to shoot for now that we’ve been to the tournament.’

In addition to Woods, who started virtually all of the Lady Owls’ games the last two seasons and was the team’s third-leading scorer and second-leading rebounder this year, Rice loses senior guard Eshombi Singleton and senior forward Annie Peck.

After appearing in just nine games and starting none in each of her first two seasons at Rice, Singleton made 19 starts last year and 10 this season — including the Lady Owls’ most important games of the season in the WAC tournament — and her 104 assists led the team. Peck spent her freshman year at Michigan State before transferring to Rice, where she made 17 starts in three seasons. When not in the starting lineup, though, tri-captain Peck stayed positive and contributed eight points per game — fourth best on the team — as the first player off the Lady Owls’ bench.

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