Georgia coach Tom Crean has been harping on his team to get off to a better start against opponents. His players did that on Saturday night against Florida, and it paid dividends with a desperately needed SEC victory.
Nicolas Claxton poured in a career-high 25 points to lead the Bulldogs to 61-55 road win. The victory was Georgia’s first since Jan. 26 and snapped a 13-game SEC losing streak.
The Bulldogs (11-18, 2-14) were able to avoid becoming just the third team in school history to win only one conference game. Georgia went 1-15 in 1955-56 and 1-8 in 1942-43. The Bulldogs’ worst record in an 18-game conference season was 2-16 in 1973-74.
Georgia will try to secure a third conference win when it hosts Missouri Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. The season finale is at South Carolina on March 6.
The loss was a costly one for the Gators (17-12, 9-7), who were trying to secure one of the top four seeds and a double-bye in the SEC tournament. Now they’ll need to beat LSU at home and/or Kentucky at Rupp to improve their status.
Georgia played as well as it has all season in the opening 10 minutes of the game, using an early 14-4 run to build an 18-8 lead. But turnovers undid much of that good work as Florida came roaring back and made a late 3-pointer to carry a 28-27 lead into the locker room at halftime.
The Bulldogs, who are last in the SEC with an average of 16 turnovers a game, had 11 by intermission. Florida converted them into 15 points.
The Gators pushed their lead up to six points on a Noah Locke 3-pointer with 13:52 to go. But Georgia stayed focused, took better care of the basketball and kept shooting the ball well. The Bulldogs committed just four turnovers in the second half while shooting 56.1 from the floor, 40 percent from 3-point range (4-10) and 78.6 percent from the foul line (11-14).
Claxton was the only Bulldog to finish in double figures. Jordan Harris had nine points, including a driving lay-up that put Georgia ahead 59-55 with 27.6 seconds to go.
Jalen Hudson led Florida with 13 points but the Gators shot only 37 percent from the floor and 23.8 on 3-pointers for the game.
Rayshaun Hammonds, Georgia’s second-leading scorer, tried to play after sitting out the last game with a foot injury. But he managed only five minutes in the first half and did not play the rest of the game.
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