Andy Landers’s 17th-ranked Lady Bulldogs welcomed Pat Summitt’s seventh-ranked Lady Volunteers to Stegeman Coliseum on Sunday evening for a critical SEC women’s basketball game. Though the Athenians kept it close initially, the Tennesseans pulled away in the second half, ultimately carding a 67-50 victory.
Georgia played Tennessee evenly in the opening 20 minutes, with each team draining a dozen field goals, sinking a pair of three-pointers, and scoring 16 points in the paint. The Red and Black turned twelve first-half Big Orange turnovers into eight points and outscored the visitors, 6-4, on the fast break. As a result, the Lady Dogs trailed the Lady Vols by a single point at intermission.
Tennessee opened the second half with a Meighan Simmons trey to jump-start the 11-0 run that staked the visitors to a 40-28 edge. Georgia pulled to within eight with 15 and a half minutes to play, but the shorthanded Lady Bulldogs, who placed just seven players on the court over the course of 40 minutes, could not keep pace. The Red and Black, who shot 28.8 per cent from two-point range, were held without a field goal in the final four minutes in the course of falling to 5-4 in conference play.
Go ‘Dawgs!