Got your dancing shoes ready?

For the fifth straight season, the ASU women’s basketball team certainly does.

The No. 19 Sun Devils (23-8, 15-3 Pac-10), the No. 6 seed in the Trenton Regional, will begin their NCAA Tournament run this weekend when they make the cross-country road trip to Duluth, Ga., to counter 11th-seeded Georgia in a first-round matchup Saturday afternoon.

“[UGA is] much like an upper echelon Pac-10 team and like a lot of teams in the Big 12 that we played in the preseason,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “It’s obviously nothing we haven’t seen, but again it’s going to be a challenging game.”

ASU will be aiming to bounce back after two straight defeats, including a disappointing loss to USC in the Pac-10 Tournament quarterfinals in a game where Turner Thorne said “nobody played well.”

“I’d like to give that game to Georgia and say, ‘Here, scout us,’ and [have them] get really confident,” Turner Thorne said. “We stunk it up and we know it, and we know that we’re not going to do that again.”

The upset loss to USC was the Sun Devils’ first game without junior guard Dymond Simon, who was ASU’s leading scorer before re-tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee against Stanford on March 7. ASU looked shaky on both ends of the floor without its point guard, but senior guard Briann January said the Sun Devils have put the additional time off to good use and are ready to rebound without Simon.

“We’ve definitely pulled together more than ever, because we lost a crucial part of our team,” she said. “We have been practicing hard every day and adjusting our game to just cater to what we have and make the most of it.”

And the Sun Devils have no choice but to make the most of it Saturday, because now it’s win or go home for an ASU squad led by six seniors making their final trip to the Big Dance.

“[We’ve worked on] not playing tired, just leaving it all out on the court and having a sense of urgency,” January said. “You need to want it more than the other team, and that’s one thing that we needed to work on is just having that toughness for postseason, because that’s what it’s all about.”

UGA finished in seventh place in the SEC and was one of the final teams to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Lady Bulldogs’ (18-13, 7-7 SEC) resume includes wins over Florida, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Auburn, who all made the field of 64 teams.

“Obviously, our basketball team is very excited, if not thrilled, to be included,” UGA coach Andy Landers said, according to the UGA media relations Web site. “We had played ourselves onto a small bubble, and we knew that we had a chance to get in and a chance to be left out. When they called out our name, there was scream that went up and covered the entire room.”

Landers is one of the nation’s premier coaches and one of the pioneers of women’s basketball, as he was inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in 2007. He has won seven SEC titles, guided teams to five Final Four appearances and been named the National Coach of the Year four times in nearly 30 years at the helm in Athens.

“Bottom line is he’s a Hall of Fame coach,” Turner Thorne said. “Sometimes his teams might start slow, but he’s an extremely talented coach that really gets his team [ready for the postseason]. They’d rather lose a few games early or through the season and have their teams learn their lessons and be ready for the postseason.”

Turner Thorne said UGA’s style of play resembles a cross between Cal and UCLA.

Saturday’s matinee may be a low-scoring affair, as both teams rank in the top three in their respective conferences in scoring defense. UGA allows 57.9 points per game, while ASU gives up just 55.4 points each contest.

But the Sun Devils have more offensive firepower than the Lady Bulldogs, averaging more points per game (69.6) while shooting better from the field (.455) and from beyond the arc (.396).

UGA is paced by a pair of Second-Team All-SEC players in junior guard Ashley Houts and junior forward Angel Robinson.

Houts averages 12.2 points, 4.7 assists and 2.2 steals per game while logging an SEC-high 37.6 minutes per contest.

“She’s the catalyst on defense and on offense,” January said of Houts. “She’s the Energizer Bunny from what I’ve seen. It’s going to be a good matchup for me, and I’m excited about it.”

Turner Thorne coached Houts when she played for the U.S. National Team in the U21 World Championships in 2007.

“She’s a great little point guard,” Turner Thorne said. “She really does a great job running the show. She does a great job of getting her team into the sets and getting the right people the ball. She’s a key to the team.”

January, who was named the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year and a First-Team All-Pac-10 selection last week, will go head to head with Houts for the majority of the game after sliding over to point guard to fill the void left by Simon. She is averaging 12.1 points per game and currently leads the conference in assists (4.65 per game), 3-point field goal percentage (.452), assist-to-turnover ratio (2.15).

Turner Thorne said the Sun Devils will also need additional help from their reserve perimeter players. She attributed much of the spotty performance against USC to playing January and senior guard Kate Engelbrecht too many minutes and said players like senior Nia Fanaika, junior Gabby Fage and freshmen Kimberly Brandon and Alex Earl will see the floor more in the NCAA Tournament.

“We did actually have a talk in the airport with [the guards coming off the bench],” Turner Thorne said. “I just said [that] I tried something and it didn’t go really well, so the bottom line is we’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing, which is keeping fresh bodies on the floor. [That] means [they’ve] got to work triple hard this week to prepare [themselves] for this game.”

On the inside, the 6-foot-5 Robinson scores 11.6 points per game and ranks first in the SEC in rebounding (9.3 per game).

“She’s a little leaner than [Cal senior forward Devanei] Hampton, but very agile and a good finisher,” Turner Thorne said. “She’s playing very well right now and she’s a go-to player for them.”

Also on the front line is sophomore forward Porsha Philips, who averages 10.5 points and 6.3 boards per game.

“[UGA’s post players are] going to take you off the dribble, they’re going to shoot it [and] they’re going to post you up,” Turner Thorne said. “They’re very versatile and they’re skilled and they’re all good rebounders.”

ASU’s post game will get a boost this weekend when senior center Kirsten Thompson returns to the lineup. The 6-foot-6-inch Thompson missed the USC game because of a strained ligament in her leg.

ASU is 3-1 all-time against UGA, including a 67-57 win in Athens in 2004 when the Lady Bulldogs were ranked No. 11 in the country.

The winner of the ASU-UGA game will next face the winner of the contest between No. 3-seed Florida State and 14th-seed North Carolina A&T on Monday night.

Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu.