Athens — Georgia has the middle 30 minutes of its basketball games covered. It's the five minutes at the beginning and the end that has confounded the team.

As Georgia heads to Nashville for Saturday afternoon's game against No. 20 Vanderbilt, those spells will be foremost on the team's mind. Georgia (12-12, 3-8 SEC) has made a habit of either falling behind early or stumbling late in SEC games this season and it has cost them some wins, especially on the road.

Most recently the Bulldogs fell behind Kentucky 20-4 at Rupp Arena only to fight back to get within three. Then they failed to score for more than six minutes at the end of the game as the Wildcats won 61-55.

Georgia coach Dennis Felton said the late-game failures are more about conversion than execution.

"In the least eight minutes of the Kentucky game there were only about two or three possessions where we weren't as good as we'd like to be," Felton said. "But we had more possessions where we did get good looks and guys just didn't make a shot.

"You can't get any better than a dunk [missed by Jeremy Price]. You can't get any better than a layup [missed by Sundiata Gaine]. You can't get much better than an open 3 for a guy who has shot the ball well all night [Terrance Woodbury] And it's been that way for most of the season."

By Felton's estimation, the Bulldogs were in position to win in seven or their eight SEC losses. Only the Tennessee game in Knoxville — in which Georgia trailed by as many as 25 points in the second half — was a blowout.

"Other than the best teams on top of the league, I don't think there's another team that can say that," Felton said. "What I'm saying is I'm real proud of our team putting themselves in that position night after night after night. That's our challenge now, to continue to compete and somehow keep putting ourselves in that position."

That will be the challenge against Vanderbilt in its funky old gym. The Commodores, who had the week off to prepare for this game, are always tough at Memorial Gym but never more so than this season. Just ask Kentucky, which 11 days ago fell behind by 30 in the first half before losing 93-52. It was the worst loss in the history of Kentucky basketball.

"We always have extremely hard-fought games with Georgia and that's what we expect Saturday," said Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings, whose squad is 16-0 at Memorial this season and has won 29 of its last 30 games there. "We had a great game with them down there. Both teams had a chance to win and we pulled it out. They're playing better now than when we were down there, in my opinion."

On Feb. 6, the Commodores pulled out a 67-59 win at Stegeman Coliseum that illustrated perfectly Georgia's late-game struggles. The Bulldogs had trailed most of the game but got it to 58-57 on two Sundiata Gaines free throws at the 4:53 mark.

The Bulldogs limited Vandy to a single free throw in three possessions but the Bulldogs missed on a pair of open 3-pointers and forward Jeremy Price failed to convert from close range. Vanderbilt's Ross Neltner then put the game away with two clutch plays at the end.

"Certainly other teams' defensive efforts are going to increase at the end of games," said senior co-captain David Bliss. "But in order to match that you need to be really crisp with everything, cutting and passing. At the same time we've gotten some good looks in most of those games."

Said Felton: "We don't need anything extraordinary. We've had opportunities with real simple plays right there in front of us. We just need to be able to finish it, close it out and win it."

Easier said than done, for sure.