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Champions on and off the court
Posted: Wednesday March 08, 2000 02:11 PM
Andy Landers, a three-time National Coach of the Year, is in his 21st season at Georgia. Landers has averaged 24.3 wins a year, third-best among all active Division I coaches with as much tenure. The Lady Bulldogs are one of only four teams to reach the NCAA Final Four five times. Georgia is 29-3 and ranked No. 4 in the nation. Check out Landers' diary every other week on CNNSI.com.
March 7, 2000
The regular season finished with a bang. It's been an incredible ride that began November 13, with our first game in the pre-season WNIT. It has been an absolute joy to work with this group of young ladies. Watching this team develop, both on and off the floor, has been one of the more pleasurable experiences in my 25 years of coaching. Not only has this team developed to championship caliber on the floor, the individuals on this team are championship young women off the floor. A very long regular season finished with a bang, as we played down the stretch for our share of the Southeastern Conference Championship. Winning the most competitive league in the country is not an easy undertaking and, having lost the first Southeastern Conference game of the year back in December, it was somewhat difficult to visualize that we would go through the remainder of the SEC schedule undefeated...but we did! It's been a great ride. The chemistry and work ethic of this basketball team has been a real joy. This has been one of the lowest maintenance teams I have ever coached. We have had absolutely no problems on or off the floor, and it has made for an very enjoyable year for everyone. Our players' acceptance of their roles on the team has been wonderful.
Closing out the regular season with the Conference Championship and winning the tie-breaker for the No. 1 seed by virtue of our victory over Tennessee placed us No. 1 for the Southeastern Conference Tournament. We played Kentucky in the first round and continued the outstanding defensive play we had established throughout the latter part of the season. In fact, coming down the stretch we held our last four opponents to approximately 50 points per game, which demonstrated a very unselfish effort by a very unselfish basketball team. In the semi-finals of the SEC Tournament, we played perhaps the most underrated basketball team in the country: Mississippi State. When they are on, they are on, and they are anchored by one of the absolute best freshmen to ever play women's basketball in LaToya Thomas. We had an unbelievable game with Mississippi State and lost by one point, as our final shot rimmed off. Now, we enter the NCAA Tournament on a losing note. The mentality of our basketball team will need to be tweaked, but I look forward to that challenge. I am hopeful that the loss will give us even greater motivation in our quest for the National Championship. Our players' confidence does not seem to be shaken, and I would have been surprised if it was. This is a remarkable group that is very focused on their objective. On Sunday, March 12, at 5:15 p.m. on national television, the NCAA national committee will announce the pairings for the big show. We are confident we will receive one of the No. 1 seeds in the tournament by virtue of our team's outstanding play throughout the year. The most often-asked question we hear is, "Where do you think they will send you?" It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter nearly as much which regional you play in as it does who is in the regional with you. Obviously, there is no way to guess, but you can bet that on Sunday afternoon at 5:00 we will be glued to the television set to see what challenges await this basketball team. -- Coach Landers
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