Georgia had the ball in their best player’s hands with a one-point lead and only 19 seconds to play. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything, as it turned out.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who had lifted the Bulldogs on his shoulders to that point and put it in position to win, dribbled the ball off his foot and out of bounds. Vanderbilt needed every second of what remained of the clock to get off a shot and it was a bad one at that, an off-balance, line-drive of a baseline jumper with eight-tenths of a second remaining.
It went in, of course. But only after bouncing off the back rim and the backboard first.
Welcome to Georgia basketball 2013.
The Bulldogs’ 63-62 loss to the Commodores this past Wednesday night in Nashville was the fourth game in a row in which the outcome hung in the balance at the end of regulation. Georgia (13-15, 7-8 SEC) has gone 1-3 in those games. The Bulldogs split overtime games with Ole Miss and South Carolina and lost to Arkansas and Vanderbilt on shots in the final seconds.
“Over the course of the season you think eventually the breaks are going to even out,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “This team’s been pretty resilient and they’re going to have to be resilient again.”
This last one is going to be particularly difficult to get over, especially for Caldwell-Pope, who finished with 20 points and 14 rebounds in the losing effort. Though he was the main reason Georgia had a chance to win the game, there are few plays in basketball more humiliating than a dribbling turnover off one’s own foot.
“It was hard,” sophomore forward Nemanja Djurisic said. “I couldn’t really say anything to him. I just kind of patted him on his back. We all know how he felt.”
Said Caldwell-Pope: “I was shocked. I didn’t know that was going to happen. It just happened at the wrong time. Once the game was over, the locker room was just real quiet. It was real emotional because we had the game in our hands. One bad play just turned everything around.”
But neither the Bulldogs nor Caldwell-Pope will get any sympathy from Tennessee. The Volunteers (17-10, 9-6) come in as one of the SEC’s hottest teams. They’ve won six in a row, including a 64-58 victory over No. 8 Florida in Knoxville Tuesday night. In fact, Tennessee hasn’t lost since Georgia beat it 68-62 on Feb. 6 in Thompson-Boling Arena.
As a result the Vols are where Georgia could have been had it shown more poise and had some better luck at the end the last four games. With three games remaining, Tennessee is now sitting in fifth place in the SEC with a chance to finish in one of the coveted top four spots (seeds 1 through 4 don’t play until Friday of the SEC Tournament.
Georgia is currently in ninth and just game ahead of Vanderbilt and Texas A&M from having to play on Wednesday.
“Boy they’re playing great,” Fox said. “(Forward Jarnell) Stokes (12.6 ppg, 9.2 rpg) is such a factor inside it has opened up so much for everybody else. They’re playing with great confidence. So we’re going to have to play extremely well.”
The Bulldogs have shown they can do that. They led Vanderbilt by 17 points early in the second half and feel judgment calls by officials robbed them of what would have been two significant road wins. Alas, they believe they can play with anybody.
"We've got to not let up on teams," Caldwell-Pope said. "Once we have them down we’ve got to keep them down. We’ve got to keep our foot on the gas. We can’t let them get back into the game and then at the end have this dog fight. We’ve just got to finish the games."
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