Georgia’s women’s basketball team goes into the last two games of the season needing to win both if it hopes to get a bye in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.

The No. 18 Lady Dogs (20-7, 9-5) are looking forward to facing both Ole Miss and LSU inside Stegeman Coliseum.

“It’s so much easier to play when you’re at home with your crowd and somewhere you’re used to playing,” junior Anne Marie Armstrong said. “We’ve just got to use that to the best of our advantage.”

Andy Landers

Georgia is 11-2 at home this season, with those two losses coming against conference-leading Tennessee and second placed Kentucky.

Sophomore Khaalidah Miller said that being able to finish the season at home has a big affect on the Lady Dogs going into tournament time.

“Our last game last year was an away game,” Miller said. “Just being able to be in a home atmosphere with all your fans who are going to be cheering you on the entire game is really going to help us and keep us energized.”

Armstrong said that there is one other reason the Lady Dogs want to win their last two home games of the season.

“We need to come out with two wins and close out this season on the right note,” Armstrong said. “[It’s] Meredith’s senior night on Sunday, so we need to send her out on a good note.”

Landers saying goodbye to a ‘really good friend’

On Monday the announcement that Mississippi State head coach Sharon Fanning-Otis is going to retire at the end of the season became public.

Fanning-Otis has been coaching for 36 years spending time at both Tennessee-Chattanooga and Kentucky before moving onto Mississippi State.

She is the all-time winningest coach at MSU with 608 victories.

Fanning-Otis was coaching at UT-Chattanooga when Georgia head coach Andy Landers was in his first coaching job at Roane State in Tennessee.

“I’ve known Sharon darn near 40 years,” Landers said. “I’ve always admired and respected the way she ran her programs. There’s never been any clouds or conversation about not doing things the right way, so you’re losing a really good person, a really good coach and a really good friend.”

Georgia holds steady in polls

Despite losing for the first time in the month of February on Sunday, Georgia is still sitting at No. 18 in the AP Poll and No. 15 in the ESPN/USA Today Poll.

The loss to Florida did, however, end the Lady Dogs’ aspirations of winning a regular season Southeastern Conference championship.

It also changed the Lady Dogs’ predicted regional destination in the NCAA Tournament.

While at this stage ESPN’s bracketology is pure conjecture, the predicted regional seeding in the tournament often gives a good indication of where the chips will fall in March.

ESPN’s Charlie Crème has the Lady Dogs as a No. 4 seed in the Tallahassee regional, where their first round matchup would be against Florida Gulf Coast.