The nice thing about having a bye into the quarterfinals is, duh, that you have a bye into the quarterfinals. But such are the vagaries of tournament basketball that an apparent boon can become a bane.
As the No. 3 seed, the Georgia Bulldogs drew the late game on Day 3 of the 14-team event, making them the last of those 14 to play. Late games are always tricky — there’s a reason coaches hate them — and they’re doubly chancy when your opponent has played the day before. On the one hand, you’re more rested. On the other, the other team has gotten itself acclimated to the floor, the rims and the tournament itself.
On cue, the Bulldogs saw much go wrong early in Friday’s game against Ole Miss. Georgia’s three best players — guards Charles Mann and Kenny Gaines and forward Marcus Thornton — all drew two fouls and sat for the rest of the half. The three played a total of 23 of a possible 60 first-half minutes.
“It took us a long time to relax,” Georgia coach Mark Fox would say much later. “We did things that were way out of character. I told the team, ‘Just be yourself; don’t get caught up in the moment.’ But I think we did.”
Also on cue, the Rebels started hot. That was surely a carry-over from Thursday’s late game, in which Ole Miss outscored Mississippi State 43-22 in the second half. (See, the Rebels were then coming off a bye, while the other Bulldogs had played in Wednesday’s opening round. And yes, these five-day tournaments are really too much to digest.) With barely seven minutes gone, Georgia trailed by 11 points.
But the Bulldogs started figuring things out when conference play commenced in January — this is how a team picked to finish 11th in the SEC wound up the No. 3 seed — and they steadied themselves again. The freshman J.J. Frazier sank two galvanizing treys, and soon Georgia, without Mann and Thornton and soon Gaines, was still looking like Georgia, which is to say resolute and resourceful.
The Bulldogs actually nosed ahead late in the half, but a three-point play by Jarvis Summers gave Ole Miss a 38-36 halftime lead. Given how dire Georgia’s predicament might have been, a two-point deficit seemed a veritable advantage. They had induced Marshall Henderson, the Rebels’ manic shooter, to miss six of seven 3-point shots, and they had stayed in the game by hitting four treys of their own.
The second half began with the whistles directed toward Ole Miss at a rate unseen in this event since the infamous 1982 semifinal that saw five Rebels foul out against Kentucky in, ahem, Rupp Arena and prompted Bob Weltlich, then the Rebels’ coach, to weep bitter tears in his postgame address, such as it was. He took two questions before bolting the podium, cursing the refs and life in general.
The first media timeout of this second half arrived with 15:37 remaining, at which point Georgia was shooting the bonus. Let’s note that the Bulldogs took, in conference play, more free throws than any other SEC team and pronounce this just a continuation of the pattern, as opposed to something more sinister. Still, the Rebels had seen enough Bulldogs free throws in 2014 to last them a decade: Mann’s foul shot with 1.5 seconds left decided the Feb. 15 game in Athens.
By now both coaches were furious. Fox had drawn a bench warning in the first half, and Andy Kennedy of Ole Miss was working himself into a similar dither. The Bulldogs were shooting the double bonus with 10:37 to play; the Rebels wouldn’t get into the single bonus for two more minutes. Both benches were griping on every call, and there were some that warranted dispute. The crew of Pat Adams, Ron Groover and Pat Evans let control of this one slip early and never regained it.
“The game was obviously being officiated very tightly,” Kennedy said. “We had to adjust to the way it was being called, and we didn’t.”
Kennedy nearly got a technical after a Georgia steal led to Mann’s go-ahead layup. Fox did get T’d up, on the very next possession, after Mann was called for a block on Summers’ driving basket. Had assistant Jonas Hayes not restrained his boss, Fox might have been ejected. But he wasn’t, and the wild game careened onward.
Said Fox, asked afterward if the officials had indeed lost control: “It’s just so hard to call the game now with the new rules. The officials have an impossible job. It’s just the new rules are so hard to interpret.”
After Summers’ jumper with six minutes remaining, neither team managed a basket until Summers hit again with 45 seconds to play. That gave Ole Miss a one-point lead. Georgia took it back on Mann’s third-chance drive after Gaines and Brandon Morris missed.
Henderson loosed yet another 3-point shot and missed again. (He finished two for 16 on treys and was, Weltlich-like, weeping in the postgame press conference.) Georgia’s Thornton made one of two free throws. With 2.6 seconds remaining, Ole Miss had the ball with a chance to win on a trey. This time it was taken by Summers, who had been the best player on the floor. But this time he missed.
Despite making only 19 baskets in 40 minutes, Georgia advanced to play Kentucky in Saturday’s second semifinal. (There were 73 free throws taken, 41 of them by the winning team, and 51 fouls called, 29 against Ole Miss.) The Bulldogs had again figured things out, though much about this game defied figuring.
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