Perhaps Mark Fox should stand up and bang his fist on his desk about scoring.
Metaphorically speaking, that’s what Fox did about defense and rebounding when Georgia entered SEC play two weeks ago, and it worked marvelously. He ranted about the Bulldogs’ need to turn up the notch on defense and make that and rebounding more of a priority in focus and effort.
Evidently, his charges listened.
After a 6-6 start in non-conference play, Georgia (9-7, 3-1 SEC) has won three of its four SEC games heading into Wednesday night’s home game against South Carolina (7-10, 0-4). The Bulldogs have done it with suffocating defense and dominating rebounding. SEC teams have shot 39 percent against UGA and have been out-rebounded by an average of 10 per game.
But this could also be said: The Bulldogs have won despite some pretty poor play on offense. A little more polish and poise in that aspect of the game and maybe Georgia could have avoided the stress and strain of white-knuckle finishes. Saturday’s 66-61 win over Arkansas was the Bulldogs’ second that went to overtime. Their SEC margin of victory is a tad over six points.
“I’m not pleased with how we’ve played offensively the last 10 days,” Fox said Tuesday. “But we have to give the other teams’ players and coaches credit, too. We can’t say, ‘boy, we play great defense at Georgia; we held them to 31 percent,’ and then not compliment the other team when they hold us to the same number. But we need to be better.”
That’s what happened Saturday. While Arkansas shot only 31.8 percent, the Bulldogs shot worse (31.0). The difference in the game was an almost ridiculous rebounding edge — 56 to 34.
That has been the formula in the Bulldogs’ other SEC victories, too. They held Missouri to 39 percent shooting and out-rebounded it by nine. Alabama shot only 36.5 percent and lost the rebounding battle 41-32.
“Mark has done an unbelievable job,” South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. “It’s not easy to replace a lottery pick (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope). He’s done a great job of staying the course and finding a way for this team to be successful. Obviously they’re starting to find the formula.”
No one has exemplified that emphasis more than forward Marcus Thornton. The oft-injured junior has averaged 9.0 points and 8.5 rebounds in SEC play and has 10 blocks in the past four games.
“I think we’re just starting to get it,” Thornton said. “You get a little bit of a glimmer of what we can do, and you start to figure out this is really the way we need to do it. Guys start to kind of buy into the concept that defense and rebounding wins games. That has proven true these last few times out.”
It has worked, but it has been a precarious proposition. Only against Missouri did Georgia play marginally well on offense. The Bulldogs shot 43.3 percent and scored 70 points, including the overtime. They shot 32.6 percent in the win over Alabama and 33.3 percent in a loss at Florida.
“We’ve got to get back to running our offense cleaner,” Fox said. “We’ve been sloppy the last couple of weeks. We haven’t screened, we haven’t run sharp routes. We’ve been making some very poor reads, some poor decisions. So it’s a hat full of mistakes that need to be corrected.”
Consider the Dogs called out.
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