Georgia Tech heads to Los Angeles to begin NCAA Tournament against Richmond

Tech opens the NCAA Tournament at 7:30 p.m. Friday against Richmond on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles. It’s there that coach Nell Fortner’s current team will step onto the big stage looking to create a little noise as the No. 9 seed in the Spokane Regional.

The Jackets (22-10) are making their 12th appearance at the NCAA Tournament and third in the past five seasons, but the majority of the current roster hasn’t been involved in any of those experiences. Fortner said her team, instead, will focus on the experiences it does have under their belt.

“You just have to work hard and understand this is why we work. This is why we do what we do. This is why we started working on June 1, so we can get to this point in time in the season and play in this tournament and see what kind of noise you can make. We’re super-excited about it,” the veteran coach said. “We don’t have the NCAA experience per se, but we do have game experience, we do have success experience. We’ll take everything that we have, every bit of that experience on to the floor with us.”

Tech started the 2024-25 season 15-0 and climbed The Associated Press rankings as high as No. 13 before losing in double overtime to Virginia Tech at home Jan. 9. That was one of nine losses in the final 15 games for the Jackets.

Four of those defeats, however, were to ranked opponents as Tech fought its way through a tough ACC schedule. It relied on the play of Morgan and fellow junior Kara Dunn, the freshmen duo of Dani Carnegie and Chazadi Wright and veteran forwards Smith and Kayla Blackshear.

Tech’s calling card became ball security and scoring. It enters March Madness ranked seventh nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio while scoring 76.9 points per game (the third-best mark among ACC teams).

The Jackets will face a Richmond team (27-6) that earned an at-large bid into the field after winning the Atlantic 10 regular season title and losing in the conference tournament title game. The Spiders lost to Duke in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament after winning 29 games. They also played two games in the 2023 WNIT.

Fortner said the Spiders play a similar style to South Dakota State, whom Tech defeated in November in Hawaii. Richmond is the nation’s third-best shooting team at 49.2% and fifth-best 3-point shooting team at 38.3%.

“They’re a really good team. They run their offense extremely well,” Fortner said. “They can go five-out, they can post up everybody, they’ve got great size, they’ve got great experience. They’ve got some really high-level 3-point shooters. And they can have five of ‘em on the floor at the same time. They’re gonna be difficult to guard, and we’re gonna have to really be on point with our defense.”

Tech’s matchup Friday will be followed by Southern at UCLA scheduled for a 10 p.m. start. The Bruins (30-2) are the No. 1 seed in the Spokane Regional and No. 1 overall seed for the tournament. Southern (21-14) beat California-San Diego on Wednesday in Los Angeles in a play-in game.

The winner of the Tech-Richmond game and UCLA-Southern game will play Sunday at a time yet to be determined at Pauley Pavilion. The winner of Sunday’s game will advance to the Round of 16 starting in Spokane, Washington, on March 28.

“Effort. It’s gonna take extreme effort and for 40 minutes,” Fortner said of what will be necessary to advance this weekend. “Everything you do, multiple efforts. Lots of talking, lots of staying together. Things are gonna happen, adversity is gonna hit, you have to stay tough and strong. We’ve been through those scenarios this year, so we’ve had experience of being up and then getting down and having to fight our way back. So we’ve been through a lot of different experiences. This is the point in time where you call on all those things.”