Demolition derby Doogan: Spiders, star forward stifle Georgia Tech in March Madness bout

Trodding back down to the other end of the court, junior forward Maggie Doogan smiled. 

There were four and a half minutes to play in the fourth quarter, and a made 3-pointer had just brought her scoring total to 30 on the night. 

Surprisingly, Doogan missed four of her first five shots of the contest, but it didn’t take much longer after that for the University of Richmond women’s basketball team’s leading scorer to make her mark at historic Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, Calif. in the Spiders’ 74-49 Round of 64 NCAA Tournament victory over Georgia Tech on March 21. 

Doogan finished with 30 points, 15 rebounds and six assists, helping her team top the nine-seeded Yellow Jackets in decisive fashion. 

It took 25 years from their first March Madness appearance in 1990, but the Spiders will finally be dancing to the second round of the sport’s most coveted tournament. 

“It took us a while to get over [the Atlantic 10 Tournament semifinals loss], but adversity makes you do special things,” UR Head Coach Aaron Roussell said in a postgame press conference. “And these guys bounced back, they learned the lesson, they used the lesson, and they got after it, man. Today was awesome, but I’m probably equally and probably more impressed with the process that these guys have put in here the week-plus to give us this opportunity today.”

The Spiders’ success on the offensive end did not commence right away. In fact, with the way Georgia Tech’s players guarded UR’s players on the first possession, it looked as if the Spiders and Yellow Jackets were headed for a tightly-contested clash. 

Interestingly enough, though, it was a falling away shot from graduate forward Addie Budnik as the shot clock was expiring – which gave UR its first points of the game –  that set in motion the floodgates opening for the Spiders. Despite a slow start, they had pulled ahead, 19-7, through the first 10 minutes of gameplay. 

The Spiders held Georgia Tech under double-digits in the first quarter – a trend that was not infrequent over the course of the 2024-25 season, as this win marked the eleventh occasion in which UR achieved this feat. 

Georgia Tech would end up matching UR in the second quarter with both teams totaling 16 points – the Yellow Jackets proving they weren’t going away on the scoreboard just yet. At halftime, the Spiders led 35-23. 

During the second half, however, UR was in command, outscoring Georgia Tech 39-26 over the final 20 minutes en route to its 25-point win. 

Even junior guard Rachel Ullstrom, UR’s second-highest leading scorer, who had tallied just two points through the first half, eventually found her stroke, finishing with nine points, all scored in the fourth quarter. 

“We were balling on a different level today,” Doogan said in a postgame press conference. 

Budnik was the Spiders’ only other double-figure scorer, totaling 14 points to go along with seven rebounds.

This NCAA Tournament win comes on the heels of a second season in a row in which UR won its conference’s regular season championship and finished with 26 regular season wins, all culminating in consecutive March Madness appearances.

“Just getting this win on this stage, representing Richmond – we’re just a small school in Virginia, so [to] be able to make some noise on a national level means so much, and being able to represent our school is just incredible,” Budnik said in a postgame press conference. 

The Spiders will play one of the four No. 1 seeds in the tournament field in the University of California, Los Angeles in the Round of 32 at 10 p.m. on March 23. 

The Bruins, who won the Big Ten Tournament earlier in March, enter play with a 31-2 record and will be the first power-five opponent UR has faced since a three-game stretch across a week against Southeastern Conference powerhouses, the University of Texas, the University of Tennessee and the University of Alabama, back in December. 

Contact contributor Jimmy James at jimmy.james@richmond.edu