Georgia Amoore And No. 1 Virginia Tech Continue Their Deadly March Run

It was an evening full of smiles, shrugs and splashes for Georgia Amoore on Sunday. She even threw in a little trash talk on the side when she didn’t have the basketball in her hand.

Because for her, in a month where just about anything can happen, anything goes on a scorching March scoring run. The third-year guard, who could come back for another two seasons, is 26-for-56 (46.4%) from deep since the calendar flipped from February to March. Two-time Tech All-American center Elizabeth Kitley has called her “one of the best shooters she’s ever seen,” while her head coach, Kenny Brooks, calls her his “mini-me” because she sees the little things that others don’t.

Amoore, as she usually does, deflected the attention and praised her teammates for giving her the confidence to take any shot she wants on the floor. That’s what, in her words, is the reason she’s an All-American this season.

And when Tech’s offense went quiet on Friday against Chattanooga in the first round of the NCAA tournament, it was Amoore’s five treys that kept it afloat. And on Sunday, against South Dakota State – winners of 22 straight heading in – Amoore jumpstarted Tech’s 72-60 victory over the Jackrabbits with three of the Hokies’ first six 3-pointers. 

“We were just shooting well, we were moving the ball well,” Kitley said of Tech’s offense on Sunday vs. South Dakota State. “We weren’t settling, … we were taking advantage of the offensive rebounds.”

All of that culminated into sending SDSU home, while Virginia Tech moved onto Seattle and the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999, facing the winner of No. 4 Tennessee vs. No. 12 Toledo – who play Monday night at 6 p.m – on Saturday, March 25.

“A program-record 29 wins,” Brooks said. “But more importantly, it was just to get these kids this opportunity to go to the Sweet 16. We watched other teams do it before. And these kids are competitors.”

In Amoore’s first three NCAA tournament games prior to this year, she averaged 14.3 points – her highest scoring output was 18 in the second round loss to Baylor in 2021. But any doubts that she couldn’t play up to her usual standard at Cassell Coliseum were quickly erased this weekend. She scored 22 on Friday and then added another 21 on Sunday, both game-highs.

Amoore nailed her first three just 12 seconds into the game when she stepped inside the arc and then back outside, a move she’s mastered over the past two seasons, one that’s replayed on SportsCenter.

She’s typically soft-spoken on the court, usually looking for another way to take care of the defense, but she’s come out of her shell a little more this year. She jawed a little bit with the defense in her first few possessions after she hit a second step-back trey at the 6:34 mark in the first quarter.

The tough shots that she took didn’t come out of nowhere, though. Growing up in Australia, she could always shoot and play at the Division I level – her problem was exposure. Brooks first saw Amoore play when he flew to Minsk, Belarus for the FIBA Under-17 Women’s World Cup in July 2018. She only held one other Power 5 offer aside from Virginia Tech.

Amoore committed on the spot when she stepped into Brooks’s office for the first time later that year on her official recruiting trip. Starting that January, she enrolled and practiced with the team before the pandemic hit – but once it did, she couldn’t return home. So, there she was with a 15-hour time difference, thousands of miles away from Australia, and she moved into the Kitley’s home for the summer in North Carolina.

She wasn’t able to see her family until pandemic-related restrictions were lifted in December 2021 – a moment that was almost two years in the making. She was able to return to Australia for the first time this past summer since enrolling at Tech in the spring of 2020.

But through it all, the challenges and struggles, Amoore has said time and time again that the unique situation allowed her to grow as a person and as a competitor. And she was up for the task as Tech’s No. 2 option behind Kitley in the NCAA tournament in Blacksburg.

“Georgia gets a lot of the attention,” Brooks said.

Once Amoore got going with her third trey in the first quarter, the Hokies jumped out to a 17-7 lead. But she fell quiet in the scoring column for the rest of the half.

Amoore, though, doesn’t always need to score the basketball to be effective, whether it’s coming up with critical defensive stops or assisting her teammates’ baskets. She had a steal five seconds before the first half ended that led to Kayana Traylor’s buzzer beater which gave Tech a 46-23 lead. 

In the third quarter, as Tech began to squander a 23-point halftime cushion, she drilled – you guessed it – another step-back three-pointer. And then in the fourth, as the Jackrabbits hung around and trailed by 12, it was Amoore’s fifth deep ball of the evening that extended Virginia Tech’s lead once again.

“I like to take threes more than layups,” Amoore said.

Thanks to another mini SDSU run (5-0), Tech’s lead fell to 10 points with 1:54 left. Amoore had missed four threes in a row since her last at the 7:25 mark. But still, she possessed all the confidence she needed as she rose up and nailed her sixth 3-pointer of the night that stole all the momentum the Jackrabbits had gained.

“I was getting frustrated but [Brooks] just said, ‘I need you to give me those eyes, I need you to be locked in,’” Amoore said after she missed seven threes in a row. “I knew I had taken a lot of those, but I didn’t know how many, but that just went out of my mind because we needed baskets.”

For an encore, she hit one more with 1:12 remaining. At that point, a game that was more competitive than the box score indicated felt over. She streaked down the sideline with a smile on her face and 21 points to her name.

And in the final seconds, after Traylor had secured the last rebound, Amoore turned around to the student section with her arms flying up and down to pump the crowd. Her fans rose and cheered with deafening noise that drowned out the SDSU band, giving her the ovation she deserved.

Why? Because everything she’s been through – the struggles during the pandemic, the adjustments to the American-style of basketball and the early March exits – prepared Amoore for her moment.

“All of that is just the support that we love,” Amoore said of Cassell Guard’s support. “And we really do appreciate it.”

Box Score: No. 1 Virginia Tech 72, No. 9 South Dakota State 60 
Transcript: Kenny Brooks, Elizabeth Kitley, Georgia Amoore