The women’s basketball game against Georgia Thursday night featured the top two rebounders in the Southeastern Conference — Alabama’s own Tierney Jenkins, averaging 10.7 rebounds a game and Georgia’s Porsha Phillips, with 10.4.
Jenkins continued her dominant play by putting up 24 points and 11 rebounds, but the Crimson Tide only shot 32 percent for the game and fell to the 24th-ranked Bulldogs, 60-51.
“Tonight we played a really good team in Georgia,” head coach Wendell Hudson said. “One of the things that you have to do is score the basketball, and I think that’s one of the things that’s hurting our team right now. I thought we did a good job of taking the ball inside and kicking it out. There were wide open looks by people that shoot the ball in practice all of the time the way we think that they should shoot it. The young ladies are working hard and they played great defense.”
Georgia controlled the opening tip-off and missed the first shot of the game taken by sophomore guard Jasmine James. After an out-of-bounds call on Alabama, senior Porsha Phillips took another Georgia jump shot that went out-of-bounds.
Phillips finished the game with eight points and 11 rebounds.
“[Phillips] is really athletic,” Jenkins said. “She’s a really talented player, she’s super athletic and she’s really long. It was kind of a tough match up, but it’s the SEC.”
Freshman forward Kaneisha Horn scored the first two points of the game, which were immediately answered by Jasmine Hassell of Georgia on a fast-break dish by James. After the Georgia bucket, the Bulldogs got into a full court press that forced a Tide turnover.
With just under 18 minutes to go in the half, Tierney Jenkins scored her first points of the game on a strong drive to the hoop. Her next two points came off of a fast break when point guard Latoya King faked a shot and passed it to Jenkins waiting under the goal. The Tide opened the game with a 13-4 lead on the Bulldogs.
“They were playing us in man-to-man,” Hudson said. “They realized real quick that they couldn’t play us in man-to-man because we were really cutting and moving the basketball. If we would’ve made a couple of those three pointers early, then that zone would have started widening out and then we could have gotten the ball inside.”
At the end of the half, the Tide stood behind by six points with the score at 25-19.
Horn was forced to sit many first half minutes on the bench because of foul trouble; Phillips was also picked up two fouls in the first half.
Celiscia Farmer started the second half with a block against Georgia. After a missed shot by Ericka Russell, Miller scored Georgia’s opening two points making the score 27-19. Farmer soon returned the scoring favor by shooting a 3-pointer, cutting the lead to five. With less than two minutes into the half, Horn picked up her third foul, causing her to take a seat on the bench.
“I didn’t feel good once I went back in after the third foul,” Horn said. “I really couldn’t get it back going. It was very difficult because I had to change my shot. It was hard for me to make my shots because they were so long.”
The Tide cut the lead to 11 points with just over four minutes left to play. After a Jenkins drive to the goal with only 2:25 left to play, the score was cut to single digits. Nevertheless, the team could not cut the lead to less than six points and the Bulldogs walked away still undefeated (4-0) in SEC play.
Alabama (11-8, 0-6) will head to South Carolina on Sunday to take on the Gamecocks. The Tide and the Bulldogs will meet again Feb. 2 in Athens.
