Lady Jackets' comeback falls short against Latvia

Lady Jackets' comeback falls short against Latvia

By David Williams
Needs to update his lu info
ATLANTA
November 6, 1998

On Tuesday night, the Georgia Tech Women's Basketball Team team took on Team Latvia in an exhibition game at the Thrillerdome. Latvia is a touring team mainly consisting of players from Yugoslavia and some from Lithuania.

This game marked the debut of the new look Yellow Jackets as the team has attained five new highly touted recruits who got an excellent taste of high-level basketball from the Europeans.

European basketball can be characterized as very fundamental, with crisp passing and execution of designed plays. Latvia was no different as they pushed out to a 7-point lead after 5 minutes of play, burning GT on backdoor cuts and very good execution of 3- on- 2 fast breaks. The Lady Yellow Jackets were hurt by missed layups, poor free throw shooting, and turnovers which came mostly from senior Kenya Williams. At 6-1, Williams gave up a lot of height to the centers from Latvia(6-6 and 6-4), and it affected her shot at first, as she had to adjust to shooting over the opponents. However, Williams' strong defense inside coupled with nice inside scoring from Candice McCallum kept the Jackets in the game for a while. More turnovers and eight missed threes enabled Latvia to open up a 14- point 38-24 lead at halftime led by Rima Dauniene with 11 points and 4 rebounds. Williams battled back from a bad start to finish the first half with 13 points while freshman Ashley Ebert added in 10 points which included two three pointers.

The second half opened up with more of the same, as Latvia maintained about a ten- point lead. Then the game turned into the Danielle Donehew show. Donehew, who started out 0-3 from trey land in the first half, hit 5 threes in fifteen minutes to keep the Jackets close. Down 17 with 11 minutes to go, Williams caught fire, scoring ten points over the next eight minutes to tie the game at 84 with 4:13 left. Latvia extended the lead back to six, but the Jackets battled back to within one as New York phenom Niesha Butler took over making two steals, dropping off an assist, and canning a three over three minutes starting at that 4:13 mark. Regina Tate closed the lead to one with 43 seconds left, but like so many times last year, Tech could no get over the hump. Latvia made four of six free throws to close the Jackets out 96-91.

Bright spots for Tech were the heart they showed to come back from so far down. Also, the point guard play of Millie Martinez was nice, as she shook off some bad turnovers in the first half to finish with four assists for the game. Williams finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds, and two assists as she played all but one minute of the game, showing she is in excellent condition. Regina Tate and Candice McCallum rounded out the scoring with 10 each. Bad points for Tech were the turnovers, 19 for the game, and spotty defense. Even though they forced Latvia into 26 turnovers, Tech didn't do a good job of stopping the ball on the fast break and sometimes let the point guard from Latvia go coast to coast from the defensive end. Asked to comment on turnovers and inability to pull out the win, Head Coach Agnus Bereranto was optimistic.

"The turnovers are to be expected with the young guards we have. Some of the players weren't used to their style of passes especially when we pushed the ball up the floor and that's why we turned the ball over. As far as not being able to pull it out, I'm more focused on the fact that we came back from 17 down. Last year's squad would have folded, but we actually came back and tied it up. And my goodness, we put up 91 points against a professional European team. Last year we only averaged 63 against regular college teams." Catch the ever-improving Lady Yellow Jackets November 12 in their last exhibition at home. Game time is 7 p.m.

Copyright © 1998 by Gregory S. Scherrer, Editor and by the Student Publications Board

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