All It Takes Is One Game

For Georgia Tech, one win last season completely changed the program

Sept. 27, 2007

By Jeff Lippman

CSTV.com


	Jeff Lippman Jeff is CSTV.com's lead women's basketball writer. E-mail here!

Can winning one regular season game really change the entire outlook of a program? Can one win change the way the entire country perceives a team?

Georgia Tech needs 13 more wins to reach 450 since the program began in 1974-75, but it was one game last season that created the buzz that the Buzz needed to finally become an elite program.

In women's basketball, unranked teams don't often pull major upsets against ranked teams, let alone teams ranked inside the Top 5, so when No. 4 Maryland unknowingly stuck its fingers into the Jackets' hive on Feb. 1 last season, they got stung.

And while the entire nation felt the Terps' pain, Georgia Tech instantly transformed from ACC pushover to a team with the realistic goal of becoming one of the best the ACC has to offer. From that point on, in the minds of the Tech players and coaches, the Yellow Jackets had arrived.

"There is no doubt that that game really set this program in motion," said head coach MaChelle Joseph, who recently received a contract extension due to the spectacular job she's done to this point. "The players in the program and the people surrounding the program now believe that anything is possible. It gave us a tremendous amount of confidence.

"Anytime you beat a defending national champion, you know your head is in the right direction. It has been a tremendous boost for us, not only with the players we have in the program, but with recruiting as well and everything that you need to take the program to the next level."

Joseph has just four years of head coaching experience, all with Georgia Tech, and when she took over a program that had gone to only two NCAA Tournaments in its history - never earning a victory - she knew it would be an uphill climb in the mighty ACC.

"When I took the job four years ago, we talked about a five-year plan to get this program to be consistently a Top 25 program and get to the NCAA Tournament," Joseph said. "The fact that we were able to turn that corner last year and successfully navigate some unchartered waters, it was a great accomplishment for the players and for the staff. We feel like we are one year ahead of schedule and now it just gives us something to build on."

And all it took to be one year ahead of schedule was a single win against Maryland.

"Everybody talks about getting that one big win that gives you the confidence and gets people's attention and gets you thinking, `hey, we're good, we're actually good, we can do this,'" said senior leader and Tech's leading returning scorer Janie Mitchell.

Now, as Joseph says, the true test is staying ahead.

The Yellow Jackets do lose their leading scorer of a season ago in Stephanie Higgs, but return lots of senior leadership - like the forward Mitchell and guards Chioma Nnamaka and Jill Ingram - to go with the school's most highly touted freshman class ever.

And not to take credit away from Joseph and her staff, who locked up that stellar top 10 class well before the Maryland game, the freshmen who decided to make Atlanta their college home were only reassured of their decisions on that fateful night.

When 5-foot-11 Iasia Hemingway - tabbed "mini Barkley" after her idol Sir Charles - told folks about her decision to go to Georgia Tech, they scoffed, many believing the versatile five-star recruit could do better.

Who's scoffing now?

"It made me feel better," Hemingway said of the Maryland game. "I saw that they don't look up to anybody. They don't think anybody is better than the next person. So yeah, we beat Maryland last year, but this year we are trying to do even better. By them doing that, it just made me more excited to come here."

Hemingway, whose game is a lot like her idols' in that she knows she's "kinda short to be playing in the post," but says size doesn't matter, "It's all about how big your heart is," is joined by fellow five-star recruit Alex Montgomery, a 6-foot-1 forward from Tacoma, Wash.

Add in two more high-profile recruits in Deja Foster and home-grown talent Shaday Woolcock and the Buzz have a team that can compete with the likes of Duke, North Carolina, and of course, Maryland.

"Most definitely, we are looking to continue the success we had last year," Mitchell said matter-of-factly. "I think bringing in these great freshmen, we have an even better chance to do better than last year.

"I felt like the girls were going to come regardless of the Maryland game, but that just gave them something to be proud about and say, `hey, yeah, I chose Georgia Tech,' and to really wear it with confidence. And just be really confident in the decision they made."

But as much as the Maryland game did for the Tech program, it cannot win games for them in the future. That task is left up to Joseph and her players. And Tech isn't going to be making any appearances in the Top 10 so quickly.

So the question for a program that has never made back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament and hasn't even secured two winning seasons in a row since 2001-02 and 2002-03, is where they go from here, other than the obvious answer of up.

"One of the things we talked about for this upcoming season is, we don't want to just make the NCAA Tournament, we want to take it to the next level," Joseph said emphatically. "And the next level for us is the Sweet 16 and beyond. We just want to continue to do things we've never done before."

And with Joseph seemingly in Atlanta for the long haul, the experienced seniors, talented freshmen and everyone else in between are ready to begin the ascension to that next level that the young coach mentioned.

So, can one win really change the entire outlook of a program?

Ask Maryland.