Georgia looks to bust Kentucky’s bubble

Athens — Albert Jackson has been in enough locker rooms to know what’s probably being said inside Kentucky’s about now. “We can’t afford to lose to these bums,” he figures the Wildcats are saying about Georgia. “No way can we let them win.”

“With our record and the things that went on, you can’t deny that teams are saying that,” said Jackson, a junior center for the Bulldogs (11-18, 2-12 SEC), who play Kentucky at Rupp Arena on Wednesday night.

“A loss to Georgia right now, all the NCAA people will look at that like, ‘Come on, now, they lost to Georgia?’ But we know the capabilities of our team. For whatever reason we haven’t always performed up to those capabilities. But in any given game, teams know they better come with their best games against Georgia.”

Just ask Florida. The Gators (21-8, 8-6) came to Athens 17 days ago sitting atop SEC’s Eastern Division. They left the stunned victims of an 88-86 defeat with their NCAA tournament hopes suddenly blunted.

It was the same story for Vanderbilt last Wednesday. The Commodores were in the thick of the East race and NCAA bubble talk before the Bulldogs (RPI ranking 211) burst theirs 61-57.

Kentucky (19-10, 8-6) currently trails South Carolina (20-7, 9-5) and Tennessee (18-10, 9-5) in the East but still has some proving to do to the NCAA Selection Committee. So there’s much on the line.

But even the aforementioned horror tales might not elicit much fear in the Wildcats based on their previous meeting with Georgia. Kentucky rolled to a 68-45 victory Jan. 18 in Athens in a game that wasn’t even that close.

“We didn’t compete the first time we played Kentucky,” interim coach Pete Herrmann said. “So to talk about spoiler or anything like that is not any good for us. The emotion that our team feels after that first game is that they don’t have any respect for you. We’re going to have to earn that back. So I think it’s more about us than what [Kentucky is] fighting for. We need to compete.”

And for players and coaches, that’s what college basketball boils down to more than anything — respect through competition.

“I understand how teams feel based on what our record looks like,” senior captain Terrance Woodbury said. “But I feel like our team is still one to be reckoned with, and I don’t want anybody to just look past us. You’ve still got to play the game. You’ve still got 40 minutes to play. Regardless of what the outcomes means, we’re going to go out there and play, and we’re going to try to get these next two wins.”