In a game Georgia absolutely had to win, its best player was lost to a knee injury after 95 seconds. Oh, and Georgia was facing Kentucky. This would seem to meet every definition of “worst-case scenario.”
But the Bulldogs nearly won the thing, and no, this isn’t the equivalent of saying the Falcons nearly won the Super Bowl. Georgia fought a superior team to a standstill without Yante Maten, and the Wildcats, with their usual calvacade of McDonald’s All-Americans, proved utterly unable to guard the 5-foot-10 J.J. Frazier.
He scored 36 astonishing points and kept this game winnable when it should have been — just going on comparative manpower — gone with Ye Olde Wind. But he couldn’t quite lift Georgia past the nation’s No. 13 team, Kentucky prevailing 82-77, and now the Bulldogs’ NCAA bubble has all but popped.
Kentucky represented Georgia’s last major test — unless you want to count Arkansas in Fayetteville — before the SEC tournament. The Bulldogs entered Saturday’s game with an RPI of 52, which is pretty good, but with absolutely zero victories of consequence. For all Frazier’s derring-do, he couldn’t budge that number.
“J.J. was ridiculous,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “He did some unbelievable stuff. We had to trap the ball just to get it out of his hands.”
Indeed, the one time Frazier did cede the ball in the frantic final moments. With the score tied, Kentucky ran a second defender at Frazier, who passed the ball to Pape Diatta, whose shot was blocked by Bam Adebayo. Mike Edwards fouled De’Aaron Fox in backcourt. Fox’s free throws put the Wildcats ahead to stay.
“J.J. and I had been communicating since Yante went out on what kind of shots we could get,” Fox said. Of the fateful sequence, he said: “We knew they were coming to trap it, but we were in the double bonus, and we thought we could get something going to the rim.”
But no. Sound strategy. Just didn’t work.
“That’s the kind of coach Mark Fox is,” Calipari said. “We were lucky to get out alive.”
After nearly eight full seasons, this much we know about Fox’s Bulldogs: They’re resourceful, and they usually have an idea as to what they’re trying to do. We also know this: They’re bad at winning big games. They’re 0-6 this season against the SEC’s three best teams, and Fox is 2-13 against Kentucky, the standard against which SEC programs are measured.
No, the checkers aren’t equal. When Georgia plays Kentucky, the Wildcats always, always have the better players. Such is life. And this game was a cruel reminder of how much Fox can do with lesser resources: With Maten, the Bulldogs surely win this one; without him, they came very close. But that’s the story of Georgia under Fox: His teams come very close, but they never quite arrive.
At the end, it wasn’t really fair. Georgia had lost Maten to injury and its other big man, Derek Ogbeide, to fouls. The upshot was that Kentucky grabbed every offensive rebound. “They knew Yante wasn’t coming back,” Fox said. “They wore us down.”
Not that the Bulldogs didn’t have their moments. They confused Kentucky early by changing defenses. The sleek Wildcats entered ranked No. 9 nationally in Ken Pomeroy’s offensive ratings table, but Georgia defended so well that Kentucky was forced to go slow and run halfcourt sets, which is the thing Kentucky under Calipari has always done worst. (You’ll recall the then-unbeaten Wildcats’ three consecutive shot-clock violations against Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four.)
To his credit, Fox grasped reality: With his team missing its leading scorer, he couldn’t afford to let Frazier sit with two fouls for the half’s final 6 1/2 minutes. With 2:34 left and Georgia down by three, Frazier returned. He scored the Bulldogs’ final six points, the last three on a 25-footer over Malik Monk just before the halftime horn. That cut Kentucky’s lead to 33-31.
Frazier had 15 of Georgia’s 31 points in the first 20 minutes. He would be even better over the next 20. I’ve seen a few grand Bulldogs performances in my time — saw Wilkins, saw Willie Anderson, saw Litterial Green, saw Jarvis Hayes, seen them all — but I’ve never seen a better one than this. Frazier had 11 baskets; the other Bulldogs managed 17, and three of those were off his assists.
And it availed the Bulldogs not one whit. Georgia is 15-12, 6-8 in SEC play. It may be without Maten for a while. (“Obviously it’s a serious injury,” Fox said. “How serious we don’t know.”)
It’s very hard to see this team making the Big Dance from here, and this might be Fox’s best team. Yes, he’s a good coach, and yes, he gets pretty much the max from his players, and yes, he has been unlucky. (Can’t get less lucky than losing Maten against the Blue Blue.) But this is Year 8, and the time for moral victories is long since past.
