If you saw my post earlier in the day, I thought that the odds of the Lady Dogs making the NCAA Tournament were as long as they could be. The experts agreed. As the brackets were unveiled on Monday evening and region after region omitted Georgia, it wasn’t looking good.

But then in the last group announced was a pleasant surprise. Georgia was in as the #11 seed in the Trenton Regional, and they’ll get to enjoy the payoff of being selected as one of the 16 host schools by playing the opening two rounds right down the road in Duluth. Though the seed is quite a bit lower than we’re used to, the Lady Dogs are going to the tournament for the 15th consecutive season and for the 26th time out of 28 opportunities. “Obviously our basketball team is very excited if not thrilled to be included,” head coach Andy Landers said. “We realized the bubble and the size of the bubble. We had played ourselves onto a small bubble, and we knew that we had a chance to get in and a chance to be left out.”

Of course the low seed means that the Lady Dogs will be under the gun from the outset. They’ll open the tournament against #6 seed Arizona State, a quality Pac 10 team. ASU finished the season at 23-8 with several quality conference wins and a nonconference win over Xavier, a team that handled Georgia in Athens.

But the Sun Devils were eliminated in the Pac 10 quarterfinals and will have to play the NCAA Tournament without leading scorer and starting point guard Dymond Simon who tore her ACL in a late-season game against Stanford. A team as good as ASU is more than one player though, and the Sun Devils have plenty of depth with ten players averaging at least ten minutes per game.

Arizona State’s top inside player, senior center Sybil Dosty, should be no stranger to Georgia. She played at Tennessee during her first two years of college and was the Lady Vols’ leader in field goal percentage as a freshman and sophomore.

Here are the details for this weekend:

TRENTON REGIONAL – DULUTH SUBREGIONAL
Saturday March 21
Game 1: #11 Georgia vs. #6 Arizona State – noon ET (ESPN2)
Game 2: #14 NC A&T vs. #3 Florida State – 2:30 p.m. ET (ESPN2)

Monday March 23
Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner – 7:00 p.m. ET

Ticket Information – Come cheer on the Lady Dogs in the NCAA Tournament at the Gwinnett Arena

Tickets to the 2009 NCAA Women’s Basketball First and Second Rounds hosted by the University of Georgia at the Arena at Gwinnett Center on March 21-23 are on sale and can be purchased online at http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E0040F8ADDB6455 or by calling 1-800-745-3000.

All-Session tickets are $30 for adults and $20 for youth. Single-Session tickets are also on sale and are $20 for adults and $12 for youth to attend both games on Saturday and $15 for adults and $10 for youth to attend Monday night’s Second Round matchup.

Groups wanting to attend a single-session can purchase tickets for $12 each as long as the group is at least 25 people in size. To order group tickets, please call 770-813-7681.