Psycho H

After watching the Georgia Lady Bulldog basketball team upset No. 17 ranked Vanderbilt last night, something occurred to me: Ashley Houts needs a nickname. The Georgia point guard scored a game-high 18 points and recorded seven rebounds. After yet another exceptional performance, Houts has earned the status that makes an athlete worthy of a pseudonym.

On the season, she leads the club in minutes played, just as she has done for the three years she has been with the program. Even when she recorded her fourth foul midway through the second half of the game, she didn’t go to the bench. That is because she leads the team in something more than just statistical categories. Either that, or she has an aversion to benches.

With the basketball, Houts maneuvers through defenders as if they were traffic cones. Without the basketball, Houts shows that she is determined to get the basketball back. She dives after loose balls as if they were made of fine china. Even though she is so often successful at stealing the ball, she is just as effective in getting rid of it; she leads the team in assists as well.

Head coach Andy Landers admits that even he takes the play of Houts for granted at times. That Houts averages better than thirty-six minutes a game truly shows how heavily Landers relies on his star player.

Essentially, she is the female equivalent of North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough, last year’s Naismith award winner. Since his determined play borders on insanity, Hansbrough has earned the nickname ‘Psycho T.’ That being the case, Houts should be ‘Psycho H.’ The only difference between the two players is about 14 inches; Hansbrough stands at 6’8” and Houts at 5’6”.

The technical term for the style of play for these two players is ‘scrappy.’ What players lack in talent, they make up for in relentless determination and basketball savvy. Make no mistake, Ashley Houts does not lack in talent. The addition of tenacity only makes her an outstanding player.