Caldwell-Pope leads Georgia past Furman
ATHENS – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope knew Georgia needed a spark, so he took control.
Caldwell-Pope made a steal and consecutive baskets to stop Furman’s second-half run and the Bulldogs went on to defeat the Paladins 64-50 at Stegeman Coliseum on Friday night.
The two baskets capped Caldwell-Pope’s personal run in which he scored 11 consecutive points for the Bulldogs in a 6-minute span. The freshman, who played at Greenville High, finished with 17 points – the second-highest total of his young career -- as Georgia (7-5) won its third consecutive game.
Caldwell-Pope, who is the SEC freshman of the week after scoring 21 points in a victory at Southern California on Dec. 17, leads the Bulldogs at 13.9 points a game.
“He’s off to a great start,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “He’s leading our team in scoring. He’s been an outstanding defender. He’s been unbelievably coachable. He was coached well in high school. He has really been a sponge and has trusted our staff. That’s one of the reasons why he’s had great success. He listens.”
He also sensed the Bulldogs needed a big play to stem a Furman run. The Paladins (6-6) hit three consecutive 3-pointers to cut Georgia’s 16-point lead to 43-36 with 12:20 remaining in the game.
Caldwell-Pope had already scored three consecutive baskets when he made a steal and a layup to push the lead to 45-36 with 11:33 left. Furman turned the ball over on its next possession and Dustin Ware found Caldwell-Pope sprinting down the court for a dunk to push the lead back to double figures.
“They made a couple of baskets. You have to give them credit for that,” Fox said. “I was going to let our team play through that situation. We need to grow up. I thought Kentavious showed some real signs of maturity. He made a play there on defense to get us back into position to have a double-figure lead. I thought that was a nice play by him.”
Gerald Robinson, who scored 13 points, hit four consecutive free throws to increase Georgia’s lead to 56-41 with 8:19 left.
“Everyone’s growing up and getting better,” Robinson said. “Kentavious is putting himself in position to make shots and he’s helping us win ball games. Hopefully he’ll continue that success during conference play.”
Fox used one of Georgia’s final three non-conference games to find playing time for 14 players. Reserves filled the court at times as Nemanja Djurisic played 13 minutes, Tim Dixon played 12, Connor Nolte, who transferred from Furman, played 11, and John Cannon and John Florveus each played 8 minutes.
Some of that was necessary because Marcus Thornton, Georgia’s leading rebounder at 6.3 a game, played only 5 minutes before leaving with an injury. Fox didn’t know the severity of Thornton’s injury after the game.
“He’s a very, very valuable part of our team,” Fox said.
Georgia entered shooting 66.5 percent from the free-throw line, but hit its first 16 attempts before Cannon missed one with 21 seconds left. The Bulldogs also had only nine turnovers, finishing in single digits for the third consecutive game. They had 15 assists on 21 field goals and shot 50 percent from the 3-point line (6-of-12).
“That was a good win,” Fox said. “Our team executed well. They shared the ball a lot and played very unselfishly on offense. You have to credit our defense as well. They played very well in the first half and their play led to a lot of easy baskets in the second half.”
