Region Champs! No.7 WGTC women take GCAA DIII Title

February 23, 2014

OXFORD, Georgia – The seventh-ranked West Georgia Tech women’s basketball team won its first-ever Georgia College Athletic Association / Region 17 D-III Women’s Basketball Tournament Championship Sunday afternoon with a 98-46 victory over the Georgia Northwestern Lady Bobcats on the Oxford College of Emory University campus in Oxford, Ga.

The win also puts West Georgia Tech one win away from advancing to the NJCAA D-III Elite 8 National Championship Tournament in Rochester, Minn. To get there, they will have to Montgomery College (Md.) in the District G play-in game on the LaGrange College campus next Saturday.

“This was a goal of ours that we set when we started back on August 12, to win this game, to win the conference tournament,” said West Georgia Tech head coach Kenny Edwards. “These girls have represented the school so well, and I’m proud of them for accomplishing what they have accomplished so far this season. We certainly have more to play for, and we’ll start getting ready for next Saturday’s game tonight.”

Tattyanna Larocque scored a career-high 24 points on 11-of-15 shooting to lead West Georgia Tech. She also had a team-high nine rebounds.

Jasmine N. Williams (18), Jhalyn Feaster (14), Kadriana Howard (11) and Kelsey Walthall (11) also scored in double-figures for West Georgia Tech.

West Georgia Tech played as well as it has played all season, never looking back after going on a 30-4 run in the first half to turn a 9-8 lead into a 41-14 advantage with 3:15 left in the half.

WGTC used its trademark suffocating, full-court pressure defense to force 29 Lady Bobcat turnovers.

“We have fourteen different defensive sets in our system and we ran all fourteen of them tonight,” Edwards said. “We played as well as we could play defensively, outside of a few possessions here and there. We really played with tremendous effort late in the first half.”

West Georgia Tech held GNTC to just 25.9-percent shooting for the ballgame (15-of-58). WGTC shot 50.6 percent (41-of-81).

West Georgia Tech improves to 17-8 overall with the win, while Georgia Northwestern ends its season at 5-18.

West Georgia Tech has had quite a memorable season thus far, having climbed in the national polls to its present ranking of no. 7 thanks in part to a best-in-the-nation 9-7 record against NJCAA D-I competition. Earlier this week Kadriana Howard was named Region 17 Player of the Year while Edwards won Coach of the Year. Now they can add a Region 17 Championship to that list of accomplishments.

But there is still work to be done.

West Georgia Tech will now turn its attention to the District G championship game against Montgomery College (Md.), which will be hosted by WGTC next Saturday in LaGrange. The start time of Saturday’s game will be determined on Monday.

If West Georgia Tech wins that game, the Knights will become the first team in school history to compete for a national championship in the National Junior College Athletic Association. The NJCAA D-III Women’s Basketball National Championship will take place March 13-15 in Rochester, Minn.