Tech women earn berth in NCAA Tournament

Seeded No 5, Yellow Jackets will play No. 12 Stephen F. Austin on Sunday.

Georgia Tech is back in the NCAA Tournament. After their highest fifinish in the ACC in team history, the Yellow Jackets earned a No. 5 seed and will play No. 12 Stephen F. Austin in the fifirst round Sunday. The fifield was announced Monday evening.

It’s Tech’s fifirst women’s tournament appearance since 2014 and 10th overall, and the fifirst for coach Nell Fortner with the Jackets. It also adds a noteworthy sentence to the biography of Fortner, who is in her second season at Tech after returning to coaching following a seven- year run as an ESPN commentator.

Tech is now the third team she has led to the NCAA Tournament, following a combined three berths at Purdue and Auburn in a total of nine seasons. She was named ACC coach of the year at the end of the regular season in the media vote after leading Tech to a record of 15- 8 overall. The Jackets were 12- 6 in the ACC, good

for third place, the highest the team has ever placed in the conference.

St ephen F. Austin, t he Southland Conference champion, is 24- 2 and has won its past 19 games. Notably, the Ladyjacks won at Auburn in December, although the Tigers finished 5- 19.

If the Jackets advance to the second round, they’ll face the winner of No. 4 seed West Virginia and No. 13 seed Lehigh. West Virginia is 21- 6, finished second in the Big 12 behind Baylor and reached the conference championship game.

The No. 1 seed in the region is South Carolina, which is 22- 4 and ranked No. 6 in the AP top 25 poll.

The entire t ournament will be played in and near San Antonio, Texas.

BEN MCKEOWN/ ASSOCIATED PRESS Georgia Tech’s Lotta- Maj Lahtinen ( left) and Lorela Cubaj team up to battle North Carolina State’s Elissa Cunane for the ball in the post during their semifinal matchup in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in Greensboro, N. C., on March 6.