NCAA Women’s Basketball : Dear Andy Landers: Can You Help Georgia? Answer Is in Final Four

It’s no wonder Andy Landers called the University of Georgia women’s basketball program “one of the worst major-college basketball situations in the country” when he took over as Bulldog coach in 1979.

The team was in shambles.

Try this for lack of continuity: In the six years before Landers’ arrival, Georgia had four different coaches who, combined, won 37 games and lost 85.

And how about this for dissension: The year before Landers got the job, Georgia players decided to boycott one game. The trainer and manager quit, and even the coach, Carolyn Lehr, boycotted a game. That team had a sparkling 6-19 record.

Now here’s a lack of resources: The total women’s basketball budget in 1979, including five scholarships, was $36,000. The team had no dressing room or practice uniforms. No money was allotted for recruiting.

“I’ll tell you how bad it was,” said Landers, 32. “There’s a school in South Georgia, Lowndes County High School, that won three mythical national championships, won 138 straight games and had at least one Parade All-American every year.

“The first thing I did when I got the job was call them, and I knew I was in trouble when the coach said that it was the first time he’d ever been contacted by the University of Georgia.”

It seemed as if Landers had picked a terrible time to leave his job as coach at Roane State Community College in Tennessee, but as it worked out, the timing was perfect.

Vince Dooley had just been named Georgia athletic director, and one of his first moves was to beef up the women’s basketball program.

Landers’ first move was to trim it.

He cut 11 of the 12 players from the 6-19 team, brought in some junior college transfers and went 16-12 in his first season.

Then, he recruited four high school players who were considered the best in their respective states: Wanda Holloway in Pennsylvania, Rhonda Malone in Tennessee, Deborah Mitchell in Mississippi and Barbara Murray in Georgia.

All four started on a team that went 27-10 and won the National Women’s Invitational Tournament in 1981. The Bulldogs went 21-9 in 1982 and made the NCAA Final Four in 1983, finishing with a 27-7 record.

Georgia is back in the Final Four this year and will meet Western Kentucky tonight at the University of Texas, with the winner advancing to Sunday’s championship game against either Old Dominion or Northeast Louisiana.

The transformation is complete. Georgia has risen from the depths of women’s college basketball to become a national power.

And although Landers still hasn’t landed a Lowndes County player, he now has on the roster Teresa Edwards, a 1984 Olympian from Cairo, Ga.; Amanda Abrams of Milledgeville, Ga.; Lisa O’Connor of Cartersville, Ga., and Traci Waites, considered the best high school player in the state last year, of Conyers, Ga.

Landers also has a $200,000-budget, 15 full scholarships and two full-time assistants. He had none the first two years.

But Landers has had to pay for success.

“When you win, people don’t like you as much,” he said. “Five years ago, people used to call me with scouting reports, and scheduling wasn’t a problem because we weren’t a threat to anyone. Now, the phone never rings.”

The phones were probably ringing off the hook last November, though, when the NCAA was investigating Georgia for two alleged infractions of NCAA bylaws.

The incidents dated back to 1983.

In one, Landers was scouting Katrina McClain, now Georgia’s starting center, during McClain’s senior year at St. Andrews High in Charlestown, S.C. He also talked to McClain’s teammate, sophomore Phylette Blake.

Landers said he greeted Blake and told her that she had played a nice game. Others charged that Landers was illegally trying to recruit the sophomore.

In the second incident, assistant coach John Sewell was leaving for Marietta, Ga. to pick up Kathy Wilson, a prospective student-athlete, for an official campus visit.

Janet Harris, already on the team then and now a starting forward, knew Wilson from a basketball camp and asked to accompany Sewell on the trip. She did, thereby violating a rule against schools providing transportation for athletes.

Both charges were dismissed in January. In Blake’s case, she denied that Landers had tried to recruit her. In the Harris-Wilson case, the NCAA declared that there had been no advantage to anyone involved.

“I guess it was a big deal because it was in every paper in the country,” Landers said. “But I don’t think it had any effect on our program. I don’t think high school players read the little paragraphs in the paper.”

The investigation had no negative effects on the team. Georgia is 28-4 and is expected to improve upon its previous appearance in the Final Four, when the Bulldogs were blown out by USC in the 1983 semifinals, 81-57.

“When we got here the first time, we felt good about being here, but the second time we feel determined,” Landers said. “When we played in Norfolk (in 1983), we were like the junior high school kid at his first dance--we just stood on the wall.

“Well, this is our second time to the prom, and usually, if you just jump out there and dance, everything takes care of itself. When the band fires up the tunes tonight, we’re gonna bop.”

Tournament Notes USC forward Cheryl Miller and Cal State Long Beach forward Kirsten Cummings head the list of Kodak All-American selections announced Thursday. Miller, a junior who averaged 27 points and 16 rebounds for the Trojans, made the team for the third-straight year. For Cummings, a senior, it was a first-time honor. The two join Georgia’s Janet Harris and Teresa Edwards, Northwestern’s Anucha Brown, Tennessee’s Sheila Collins, Old Dominion’s Medina Dixon, Texas’ Kamie Ethridge, Louisiana Tech’s Pam Gant and Northeast Louisiana’s Eun Jung Lee on the Division I team. Shontel Sherwood, of Claremont’s Pomona-Pitzer College, was named to the Division III team, and Shamona Mosely, of L.A. Trade Tech, was named to the community college team. . . . Tonight’s Western Kentucky-Georgia game will be a rematch of an earlier nonconference meeting, won by the Hilltoppers, 72-67. The Old Dominion-Northeast Louisiana game will be the first meeting of the teams.