Sitting next to Charles Mann up on the podium in the interview room at Stegeman Coliseum, Georgia coach Mark Fox was asked what he thought of the Bulldogs’ ball-handling during their 63-56 win over Vermont.
Our ball-handling was terrible,” Fox said with a wry grin. Then he elbowed his point guard. Hard.
Mann was a source of both frustration and fascination for the Bulldogs Wednesday night. On one hand he had a terrible night handling the basketball, committing seven of Georgia’s season-high 22 turnovers. Then he went out and scored 16 of the Bulldogs’ 25 points as they mounted a furious comeback to turn a nine-point deficit into a seven-point victory in a span of nine minutes.
When the dust settled, the sophomore point guard from Alpharetta had poured in a career-best 29 points and made 12-of-13 free throws, almost every one of them in the clutch.
“During halftime my teammates told me to keep my head up and just keep playing like I play,” said Mann, who had more turnovers (5) than points (4) at intermission. “I just let the first half go. The second half was a new start, a new beginning, and I just played my game.”
Mann wasn’t the only Georgia player who came through in the clutch. A 67 percent foul-shooting team, the Bulldogs made 24-of-26 (92.3 percent) on Wednedsay. Junior forward Marcus Thornton was 8-for-8 from the stripe and added 16 points. Georgia out-rebounded its visitors 31-18.
Vermont (22-10), which came in as the second-leading free-throw shooting team in the America East Conference (.731), was 6-of-15 from the foul line (40 percent).
“That was a March game between two very good teams,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “I thought we would have our hands full in the game tonight. And we did.”
The victory gave Georgia (20-13) its 12th 20-win season in school history and sets up a second-round home matchup against Louisiana Tech (28-7). The Creole Bulldogs pulled out an 89-88 win over Iona on Wednesday.
The NIT scheduled the game for 11 a.m. on Saturday at Stegeman Coliseum. As it turns out, UGA students have to attend classes Saturday as a make-up date for the ice storm that shut down the university earlier this year.
But they came out in strong numbers Wednesday night. Georgia offered free admission to students and 1,428 of the 3,951 in attendance attend the school.
“Vermont wore us out for a period there in the second half, then our crowd lifted us back up,” Fox said. “For a team that started slow before Thanksgiving, this team climbed back and our fans have been right there with is.”
It looked fairly hopeless for the Bulldogs with 9:10 to play. At that point, Georgia trailed 47-38, had not scored a field goal in more than seven minutes and had been out-scored 21-2 since leading by 10 early in the second half.
But that’s when Mann took over the game. The 6-foot-5 guard started driving to the basket and he would either score or get fouled and sometimes both. His three-point play at the 7:31 mark got the Bulldogs within two.
Vermont temporarily checked the run when it scored on back-to-back possessions. But guard Sandro Carissimo’s jumper with 6:25 was the Catamounts last points of the game until he made two meaningless foul shots with 12 seconds left.
“(Mann) has a lot of size for his position and he is a very good player,” Carissimo said. “He can use his strength and size once he gets a step on you and gets on your hip, then he is good at finishing around the him.”
It shouldn’t have been nearly as hard as it was. The Bulldogs had 13 turnovers in the first 20 minutes – they’d averaged 12.7 for entire games coming in – but still managed a 29-20 lead at halftime. They got the lead to 10 before a flurry of turnovers put the Catamounts on the attack and ignited a 21-2 run.
“I think we came out flat early on,” Thornton said. “We just got kind of lazy with the ball and made some careless mistakes that were uncharacteristic of us. Eventually we settled down.”
Said Fox: “The bus had to run over us first before we decided to get back to who we really were all year.”
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