At approximately 11:38 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday night, the Georgia Bulldogs finally found out who they’re going to play in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals on Friday.
It’s South Carolina, and that was not decided until — literally — the very last second.
Ole Miss, which had trailed most of the game, improbably shot ahead on a four-point play by Jarvis Summers with 3.3 seconds remaining. His foul shot after a 3-pointer in the left corner gave the sixth-seeded Rebels a 58-57 lead and what seemed an almost certainty to advance.
But LaDarius White tightly guarded South Carolina’s Tyrone Johnson all the way down the court after the subsequent inbounds and was whistled for a three-shot foul when Johnson heaved an off-balance shot at what officials figured to be :00.7 left on the clock.
“My job was just to get the ball off,” said Johnson, who finished with a measley five points in the game. “I saw that it was 1.3 seconds on the shot clock and I saw him coming and I just jumped up and he fouled me. My thing was to knock down those (first) two free throws and ice the game.”
Johnson, a senior from Plainfield, N.J., stepped up and made the two free throws his team needed before an Ole Miss timeout, then one more after for one of the most unlikely wins one will ever see, 60-58.
“Never been involved in an ending like that,” South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. “It’s the beauty of college basketball.”
So that sets up a third meeting between Georgia (20-10, 11-7 SEC), seeded third in the tournament, and the 11th-seeded Gamecocks (17-15). There’s bad news and good news in that. The bad is that South Carolina won the other two meetings. The good is the Gamecocks will be playing for the third consecutive night while the Bulldogs will be coming out on six days rest.
Georgia lost by 17 points (67-50) when it played South Carolina in Columbia on Jan. 31 without leading scorer and rebounder Marcus Thornton. The Bulldogs lost again 64-58 in Athens on Feb. 17. They were playing then without guard J.J. Frazier.
“When you play an NCAA tournament team three times, you’ve got to be pretty good yourself,” Martin said. “They were undermanned both times we played them. We were undermanned both times, too. We’re going to line up and play and give it our best shot.”
Ole Miss falls to 20-12 overall and puts itself in a precarious position with regard to the NCAA tournament. It was the Rebels’ fourth loss in their last five games.
“We have now taken destiny out of our own hands, and so now we just have to wait and see what the other teams that are in the equation have done,” Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said.
Ole Miss got its first lead since 2-0 when White made two free throws for a 45-44 advantage with 6:07 to go. That set forth a furious finish in which the teams would exchange leads and ties nine times until the fateful ending.
Michael Carrera led the Gamecocks with 16 points and Duane Notice had 15. Johnson finished the game with only five.
Ole Miss got 17 from White. The Rebels’ leading scorer, Stefan Moody, had just eight on 3-of-15 shooting.
Each team shot just 30 percent from the floor and they combined to miss 76 shots and commit 34 turnovers.
In other second-round games Thursday at Bridgestone Arena, Tennessee used a 20-2 run over the final six minutes of the game to overtake Vanderbilt, 67-61, Auburn continued its improbable run with a 66-59 upset of fifth-seeded Texas A&M, and Florida rallied to beat Alabama. The Gators’ reward: To play No. 1 and unbeaten Kentucky for a third time this season.
The Aggies’ loss effectively knocked them out of NCAA Tournament consideration. Coming in with an RPI in the mid-50s, it was A&M’s fourth loss in the last five games. It was playing its third game without their leading scorer, Danuel House (foot)
About the Author
