BASKETBALL
The Lady Dawgs played a close one Sunday afternoon but held on to down High Point 66-61 in Stegeman Coliseum. They were aided by a game-high 16 points out of Jasmine Hassell, while Jasmine James chipped in 13 points to move Georgia to 8-2 on the year.
Neither team led by more than eight points all afternoon. In all, there were four ties and seven lead changes in the inaugural meeting between the two teams.
“The last three minutes of the game our defense was pretty good,” said coach Andy Landers. “On the inbound plays, we got balls on the floor. It was good that in the last three minutes we had a couple of fouls to give and we were not in the bonus situation. That allowed us to foul a couple of times and basically they got the ball out of bounds instead of going to the line and having the chance to score.”
High Point was dominant from three in the first half, going 7-of-10 from deep through the first 20:00, including perfect 6-for-6 shooting from Jurica Hargraves and Mackenzie Maier to pace the Panthers at the outset.
The Lady Dawgs led by just a three-point margin at the break, and the tightly-contested action continued in the second frame.
Less than two minutes into the second half, the Panthers’ Frances Fields made a trip to the line and sank both her free throws to make it a one-point game, 39-38. Georgia then scored six straight points – all belonging to freshman Khaalidah Miller – to take another seven-point lead, 45-38, with 16:55 remaining.
Georgia took another seven-point advantage, 47-40, with 14:16 on the clock on the strength of a jumper for James, but High Point hung around and cut it back to a two-point Georgia lead, 53-51, with 8:12 left. The teams went blow for blow over the next two minutes before the Lady Dawgs put up a 5-0 run to take a seven-point lead, 62-55, with just 2:37 to play.
A pair of free throws for Shamia Brown, followed by a jumper from Maier trimmed the Lady Dawg lead back to just three late. James and Brown traded jumpers to keep it a three-point differential, but when Hassell grabbed a rebound following an HPU miss, the Panthers were forced to foul. Hassell sank both from the stripe to re-establish the five-point lead, 66-61, with eight ticks left and that’s where it stayed as Georgia earned the victory in front of the home crowd – their final home outing prior to the holidays.
Behind the double-digit efforts of the Jasmines – Hassell and James – Georgia got nine from the freshman Miller. HPU was led by a trio of players with 13 points in Hargraves, Brown, and Maier.
Georgia jumps to 1-0 vs. High Point and 14-1 all-time vs. teams from the Big South conference.
The Lady Dawgs will hit the road to play Wednesday, December 22 at TCU – a 7:30 p.m. tip to be shown on CSS. Georgia will play two as part of the FIU Fun and Sun Classic December 29-30 in Miami, before returning home to open the SEC slate January 2 at 2 p.m. vs. South Carolina.
Notes
• Today’s win marks the first in Georgia’s series with High Point.
• With the win today, Georgia is now five wins shy of 800 all-time victories in intercollegiate play.
• Andy Landers is now 10 wins shy of his 850th career victory as a collegiate head coach.
• Porsha Phillips is now 108 points from 1,000 career points as a college basketball player.
• Porsha Phillips is now 12 blocks from No. 8 Tasha Humphrey.
• Khaalidah Miller had a season- and career-high rebounds with six.
• Khaalidah Miller also had a season- and career-high minutes played with 29.
• Jasmine Hassell had a season-high eight rebounds.
Double-Digit Lady Dawgs
• Jasmine Hassell hit double digits in today’s game with 16, her sixth of the season and 13th of her career.
• Jasmine James hit double digits in today’s game with 13, her sixth of the season and 24th of her career.
Georgia Head Coach Andy Landers
No question that they are a good team. We watched them on tape and in discussions with our players, we made it a point to tell our kids they won’t go away and they won’t quit. We told them that this team has been behind before and they keep playing. They’ve come from 20 behind before. They are not afraid to get beat, and they know about winning. I thought at times both teams played very well today, but there were also times when neither one of us could do a whole lot with the other.
Today, Hassell was consistent from beginning to end. She was very good and when we finally found her in the first half she cashed in. But they started defending the shot and we didn’t do a good job of recognizing it and threw away about four times trying to force it to her. We were able to come back to her again later in the game, and she was terrific when she got the ball down low and could turn and go to the basket.
High Point Head Coach Tooey Loy
The biggest thing we had to do was stay close to equal on the boards. Georgia is such a big team and we had to limit their second shots. We did a good job considering our size compared to theirs. At half time the rebounds were pretty close to even. They hurt us a little bit, wore us down as the game went on.
I thought we did a really good job of guarding them inside. We’ve watched them on film. Porsha Phillips can really hurt people under the basket. I thought we did a good job guarding her. We’ve always been pretty good at the guard spot and we’re improving in the post. We took another step in being able to play these bigger schools.
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