It was Angel early and Ashley late last night as the two senior superstars combined for 40 points and 20 boards to lead the Lady Bulldogs to a 64-59 victory over Tulane in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. That five-point margin of victory is a little misleading as the Lady Dawgs had the game well in hand with a 14-point lead with less than two minutes left to play. At that point, Tulane made a pretty impressive garbage time run (that was aided by some ridiculous non-calls as Ashley was repeatedly mugged, resulting in “turnovers”) to close to within a respectable-looking point margin at the end…but the bottom line is: Georgia lives to fight another day and moves a step closer to the Final Four.

Ash, as noted, was phenomenal down the stretch as she led all scorers with 22 points to go along with seven rebounds and six assists. Angel went double-double (18 points and 13 boards) and was a dominant factor down low all night. J.J. and Meredith played all 40 minutes (as did Ashley) and while they both had off-nights shooting (a combined 5-of-18 from the field), they hit key shots down the stretch and played some pesky defense. Anne Marie also came up big in 14 minutes of play, grabbing five rebound and knocking down a couple of long outside jumpers.

The Lady Bulldogs will now face an Oklahoma State team that had to fight like the devil to fend off an upset bid from Chattanooga in last night’s early game. The time for that second-round game was not yet set as this updated was posted…but ESPN2 will be looking to air the most competitive match-ups during prime time. You have to figure that a four-versus-five showdown between two outstanding programs and two of the best guards in the nation (Ashley Houts and State’s Andrea Riley) is a strong candidate to be shown at a time when most of the nation can see it. We will, of course, have an update and game preview right here as soon as the particulars of Monday night’s Georgia/Oklahoma State game are known.

Click here for the official Georgia/Tulane recap and a link to the stats and box score.