UGA Women’s Basketball: Game Notes – Unbeatens Georgia and Notre Dame Duel in Daytona

 

 

• Georgia hits the road for the first time this season with a trip to Daytona Beach, Fla., for the 2021 Daytona Beach Invitational. The 4-0 Lady Bulldogs meet Notre Dame and Marquette — two teams with a combined 8-1 record this year.
• This week’s games will be carried via a subscription-based livestream on FloHoops.com. Kaleb Frady will handle play-by-play duties on the Georgia Bulldog Sports Network.
• Friday’s contest against Notre Dame is just the fourth all-time matchup and the first in 21 years between the Lady Bulldogs and Fighting Irish. Georgia owns a 2-1 lead in the series, with the only loss coming in a 75-73 defeat at the Coaches vs. Cancer Challenge in Madison, Wisc., on Nov. 24, 2000. Georgia legends Kelly and Coco Miller combined for 29 points in the loss.
• The Lady Bulldogs are 4-0 for the second-straight season and for the third time overall under head coach Joni Taylor. Georgia has won 12 of its last 15 games, with the only losses coming to Kentucky, South Carolina and Oregon.
• Georgia’s defense has been stifling this season. The Lady Bulldogs lead the SEC in scoring defense at 45.3 ppg and field-goal percentage defense at 26.2 percent.
• The Lady Bulldogs set a new school record with 18 blocks in the win against Alabama State. That total broke a 34-year old record from 1987, when Georgia had 16 against Mercer. The Lady Bulldogs’ 18 swats are tied for the second-most in a game in SEC history.
• Freshman guard Reigan Richardson is coming off the best game of her career. She scored 16 points, with 11 of those coming in the second half, against Alabama State.
• Sophomore forward Javyn Nicholson already has a pair of double-doubles this year after posting two double-doubles in the previous two years combined. Nicholson is averaging 11.5 points and 9.0 rebounds per game.

Georgia and Notre Dame will be meeting for the first time in 21 years when the two squads face each other on Friday. The Lady Bulldogs own a 2-1 lead in the all-time series. The Lady Bulldogs and Fighting Irish traded a home and home back in 1991 and 1992, with Georgia taking wins in Athens and South Bend by a combined 10 points.

Notre Dame is off to a fast start with a perfect 5-0 record. Freshman guard Sonia Citron has earned back-to-back ACC Freshman of the Week honors and is averaging 12.5 points and 6.5 rebounds this season. The Fighting Irish are led by a talented group, headlined by Maddy Westbeld, Dara Mabrey and Maya Dodson. The high-scoring Irish have six players averaging in double figures.

Georgia’s 2022 Signing Class is ranked No. 7 nationally according to ESPN. Janiah Barker and Sydney Bowles, two of the highest rated players in the nation, will join talented point guard product Tineya Hylton in Georgia’s incoming class.

Barker – who is considered the No.1-ranked forward nationally and among the top-3 players overall — is a native of Marietta, Ga. She currently preps at Montverde Academy in Florida. Bowles – a consensus top-10 guard prospect — is from Lithonia, Ga., and plays at Woodward Academy. They will begin their collegiate careers during the 2022-23 campaign.

Hylton prepped at Hamilton Heights Christian Academy in Chattanooga, Tenn., before going back to Canada to play at Royal Crown Academic School in Toronto, Ontario. She will join the Lady Bulldogs this season.

Georgia has held three of its first four opponents below 50 points, with Mercer the only team to crack that mark with 52 points. Head coach Joni Taylor‘s teams have held opponents below 50 points 42 times over the last seven years.

Every available player touched the floor in three of the first four contests, with 10 players playing against Mercer. Twelve of the available 13 players scored at least a point against Gardner-Webb, while 10 of 12 scored against Gardner-Webb.

Junior forward Javyn Nicholson has already matched her career double-double mark with two this season. She scored 13 points and brought down a then career-best 12 rebounds in the season-opener against Gardner-Webb, marking her first double-double since 2019. She then scored 13 pts. and brought down a new career high 13 rebs. against Alabama State.

Jenna Staiti now ranks fifth in school history with 213 career blocks. Tawana McDonald owns the program record with 297 swats during her time at Georgia. Staiti is also the SEC’s active career leader in blocks.

Head Coach Joni Taylor and her staff implemented a new offensive philosophy prior to the 2020-21 season with the goal of playing a more up-tempo style with defensive pressure.

That move has paid dividends. Since last season, Georgia has scored over 90 points four times. The Lady Bulldogs scored over 90 points just four times combined in the five seasons prior.

SEC coaches voted the Lady Bulldogs fourth in the annual preseason poll, just behind South Carolina, Texas A&M and Tennessee. Georgia came in at No. 19 in the national preseason coaches poll. Last season, the Lady Bulldogs finished ranked No. 10 in the Associated Press top-25 — its highest ranking going into the NCAA tournament since 2001.

Coach Taylor’s teams have lived by the mantra ‘It’s not where you start but where you finish.’ In five of her first six seasons, the Lady Bulldogs have finished well ahead of their preseason ranking. The largest jumps came in 2017-18 — when Georgia was picked eighth and finished second — and last season — when the team was picked ninth and finished fourth.

Georgia’s SEC Standings Under Joni Taylor

Georgia’s SEC Standings Under Joni Taylor
Season	Preseason Rank	SEC Finish
2015-16	9th	6th
2016-17	12th	8th
2017-18	8th	2nd (tied)
2018-19	4th	7th
2019-20	10th	9th
2020-21	9th	4th

Jenna Staiti has become known as ‘Steady Staiti’ over the last two seasons — and for good reason.

The Cumming, Ga., native has scored in double figures in 35 of her last 41 games with 14 double-doubles and nine 20-plus point efforts. It is a remarkable stat line for the All-SEC center, especially when you look back to her first two years of college basketball.

During her freshman and sophomore campaigns, Staiti averaged 4.4 ppg and 1.7 rpg in 65 total games played. Staiti has now more than tripled her points per game average to 13.2 ppg and upped her rebounds to 7.3 per contest over the past three years.

Georgia has become one of the top defensive teams in the SEC during Coach Taylor’s tenure. In her six seasons leading the program, the Lady Bulldogs have finished either first or second in the conference in scoring defense on three occasions, including a league-best and school record 54.1 ppg in 2015-16. Last year, Georgia ranked second in the SEC, holding opponents to 60.5 ppg. The team also finished top-5 in most defensive categories, including field-goal percentage defense, 3-point field-goal percentage defense and turnovers forced.

Que Morrison is known as one of the top defenders in the nation as she routinely guards the opponent’s top player night-in and night-out. Last year, Morrison led all players in conference play with 33 steals (2.2 per game).

The Riverdale, Ga., native has also stepped it up offensively. She has now scored in double figures in 16 of her last 17 games dating back to last season.

After suffering a string of injuries in her career, Morrison finally experienced a full healthy season for the Lady Bulldogs.

Here is a look back at some of the adversity Morrison has overcome.

The defensive stopper placed on the SEC All-Freshman Team after drawing 32 starts on Georgia’s NCAA tournament team. Then, in her sophomore campaign, Morrison missed the first eight games due to a torn meniscus in her left knee. In 2019-20, she had an injury to her foot before the year began. She then suffered a torn labrum in her right shoulder to end her junior campaign midway through SEC play.

Mikayla Coombs — a native of Buford, Ga. — was selected by her peers to serve as the vice chair of the SEC Women’s Basketball Leadership Council. As one of four elected officers, she will participate in various meetings throughout the year to provide feedback to Athletics Directors, Senior Woman Administrators and Faculty Athletics Representatives.

This news came after she was chosen as the only student-athlete representative on the NCAA competition committee. Coombs graduated with a degree in sport management from the University of Georgia and is currently pursuing a master’s in the same program. She was named a UGA Presidential Scholar in 2020, has placed on the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll three times and made the Dean’s List in 2021.

Georgia had one of the deepest rosters in the SEC last season. The Lady Bulldogs played 10 or more players in 23 of 28 games and used 11 or more players on 14 occasions.That trend looks to continue this year with 10 returners who could all see big minutes.

Georgia has one of the longest tenured staffs in the SEC. With the return of Karen Lange, Chelsea Newton and Robert Mosley, Georgia is the only team in the conference to not have a single coaching change at any level — head coach or assistant coach — over the past six years.

Junior guard Chloe Chapman played two seasons with the Georgia soccer team, but after spending two years as a dual-sport athlete, she will now focus on just basketball. The Mitchellville, Md., native was a consensus top-40 prospect and was rated as the No. 8 overall point guard in the nation coming out of high school.

Lady Bulldog freshmen Reigan Richardson and Jillian Hollingshead were both named McDonald’s All-Americans, marking the first time in Georgia history the program has signed two McDonald’s All-Americans in one class. Hollingshead and Richardson are the 11th and 12th McDonald’s All-Americans to sign with the Lady Bulldogs and are the first to commit right out high school since Ronika Ransford in 2010. Current Lady Bulldog Mikayla Coombs was a McDonald’s All-American in 2017.

Georgia junior forward Jordan Isaacs was the only non-senior to start every game for the Lady Bulldogs last season. Isaacs made big play after big play and stepped up defensively to lead her team. She made perhaps two of the most important plays of the year for the Lady Bulldogs. One was her block on Rennia Davis’ shot attempt that sealed the win against Tennessee, while the other came against Arkansas when she brought down an offensive board to set up Gabby Connally’s buzzer-beater.

Georgia is one of just two SEC programs (Tennessee) and one of just 16 teams nationwide to reach the 1,000 win total. The Lady Bulldogs accomplished the feat last season on the road at East Carolina. It was the latest impressive accomplishment for the storied program.

The Lady Bulldogs are one of only three teams, joining Wisconsin-Green Bay and Tennessee, to have a winning record every year since 1980 and have been to 34 of 39 NCAA tournaments.