Georgia’s women’s basketball players were hoping to cause an upset on Monday when the new No. 1-ranked Texas Longhorns came to town.
Texas (27–2) received the top ranking in the new AP Poll on Monday since previous No. 1 Notre Dame (24–4) went down 104–95 in double overtime on Sunday against then-No. 13 North Carolina State (23–5). It also helped that the Longhorns won 65–58 over then-No. 5 LSU (27–2) the week before.
Texas hadn’t been ranked that high since the 2003-2004 season. The Longhorns went 30–5 that year and made the NCAA regional tournament semifinal.
On Monday, Georgia (10–18) gave Texas everything it could handle for three quarters in a defense battle where the Longhorns clung to a 34–22 lead at that point, which was much closer for most of that time. Texas blew the game open with a 23–4 fourth quarter as the Longhorns got by with their second-lowest scoring output of the season in a 57–26 victory. On Jan. 12, Texas had a season-low of 50 points in a loss to then-No. 2 South Carolina (25–3).
“We held Madison Booker, who’s the number one player in the league, to seven points. That’s huge,” Abrahamson-Henderson added.
Booker, a 6-foot-1 sophomore guard, averages 16.2 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 2.9 assists per game. She received AP women’s basketball player of the week honors on Feb. 11.
Senior forward Taylor Jones stepped up offensively for the Longhorns with a team-high 17 points on 7-14 shooting. Jones also netted a double double with 16 rebounds, and she blocked five shots and tallied a steal.
“Anytime you can hold an SEC team to 26 points, you’ve done something right defensively,” Jones said.
Texas never trailed and held Georgia to 11-36 shooting at a .305 mark as no Bulldogs player scored in double figures. The Longhorns also out-rebounded the Bulldogs 40-23 and forced 25 turnovers amid eight steals and just nine team fouls.
“Our defense was elite tonight,” Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer told reporters afterward. “We always talk about our defense traveling, and we were just really special tonight. I’m proud of how we played defense.”
Texas allows 55.7 points per game, and Georgia scores 63.5 points per game. A newcomer to the SEC, Texas hasn’t enjoyed a lot of success against Georgia in the past, and the Longhorns trail the all-time series 5–4.
“I think our biggest problem was offense,“ Abrahamson-Henderson said.”Offense and not executing what we needed to execute and not paying attention to the details of what we needed to be running.”
Texas won an 11th-straight game with the victory and will look to hold onto the top ranking for longer than a week. The top ranking has changed hands for two-straight weeks after No. 2 UCLA (26–1) held the top spot for most of the season.
“It’s cool. It’s people’s opinion of us, and I think the facts is just coming out every day and winning,” Jones said. “So, it’s just taking one game at a time.”
“We can’t get to the national championship unless we win the one game ahead of us,” she added. “Just trying to keep a level head.”
The Longhorns visit unranked Mississippi State (19-9) on Friday and host unranked Florida (14–14) on Sunday to wrap up the regular season. Texas then has to tackle the SEC Tournament, which has been owned by South Carolina since 2015 with seven titles in the past nine years.
