What Mark Fox said after Georgia’s loss to South Carolina

“We made some very poor plays. Our point guards made some very poor decisions in the first half. We threw two balls away that never should’ve been thrown away. And at the end we shot the ball too quickly and gave them another possession. Their team made threes … They made 13 threes on the night, we had 17 turnovers. We felt like in the second half if we could just get it under 10, get it to single digits then we’ve got a chance to win. And we did that. We got it to six rather quickly. We played even for seven or eight minutes and then we got it back to two possessions that last two minutes. We missed a corner three that would’ve been a big basket. When you dig that kind of hole, you have to play almost perfect to get out of it. We didn’t do that.”

The style of play when Georgia plays South Carolina:

“Well I think both teams are terrific defensively. I think we both built our teams in a similar fashion. And they probably have a little more shooting on their team this year than we do, but we both I think understand to give yourself a chance to win, you have to be great defensively and I think both teams have tried to become that each night. I think Frank (Martin)’s teams have become just that.”

After playing so well the past two games, was this a step back or credit to South Carolina?

“Total credit to South Carolina. They disrupt everybody. The way that they played, you’re hoping that you’ll get a game where you can win the foul line but that’s a total credit to South Carolina and how they defend.”

On South Carolina hitting eight of final 11 shots at end of first half:

“There were certainly some slipups defensively. We made a mistake in our zone … We didn’t play particularly well in the first half. But that doesn’t take away anything from South Carolina’s team.”

On their striving for the NCAA tournament:

“I think if we got to 9-9 (in SEC play) you’d have a great chance. But we have no idea what’s important. It’s a moving target. A year ago it was about the quality win. You have to have quality wins, top 50 wins or whatever. Now we got these quadrants, quadrant one, quadrant two wins. Look at some of these teams, do they even schedule to give themselves a chance at quadrant one, quadrant two wins? Or are they just trying to tally up W’s? In this league we’ve demanded that everyone play up and a hard non-conference schedule. So there’s no easy games, there’s no chance to catch your breath, everyone is going to be 16, 17, 18, 19 wins except for a couple in the low 20s. I would say that the league is banking on, based on the philosophy that’s in place, that you play a bunch of hard games, get quality W’s and you’ll be rewarded for that. We tied for second place in this league one year and didn’t get in. So I don’t know what it’ll be. I hope that we can get to 9-9 and have the opportunity, but we’re just worried about winning the next game right now.”