ATHENS — Briefly, everything seemed possible for Georgia. With back-to-back victories over a pair of NCAA Tournament contenders and a favorable schedule down the stretch, talk of making a late run toward postseason play did not seem ludicrous.
Then South Carolina happened.
The Bulldogs (12-13, 3-8 SEC) lost by a point on the road to the Gamecocks, who previously had but a single SEC victory. Now the battle seems to be just to stay out of the conference cellar.
“We’ve got to keep our heads up and keep moving forward,” Georgia guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “We’ve got to put [the South Carolina] game behind us. It was a tough loss, but we’ve got to keep competing.”
Records and rankings aside, don’t bother bringing up postseason play to Georgia coach Mark Fox.
“We’re playing to win the next game,” he said. “That’s what we always do. You do that and all that other stuff will take care of itself.”
Said senior guard Dustin Ware: “We’re definitely still fighting for postseason, but I think right here and now we’re living in the present. We’re just trying to win the next game. We’re trying to come out and play well [Sunday] and get that win and keep going from there.”
Just winning the next game looks like an enormous task. Georgia plays host to Vanderbilt at 1 p.m. Sunday, and it appears the Bulldogs have drawn the toughest SEC team this side of Kentucky.
The Commodores (18-8, 7-4) are coming off one of the more impressive games played by any SEC team this season, throttling Ole Miss 102-76 in Oxford, Miss. Jeffery Taylor scored 23 of his 28 points in the first half as Vandy shot 70.8 percent from the floor and made 10 of its 12 3-point shots. The Commodores started the second half with a 53-28 lead. The 102 points was their most in a conference game since 1969.
“They’re rolling,” Fox said. “The loss to Kentucky [in Vanderbilt’s previous game] might have helped them in a lot of ways. I think it may have taken some pressure off of them. They played as good as they have all year.”
Vanderbilt lost to No. 1 Kentucky 69-63 on Feb. 11. That loss effectively ended any debate over the SEC regular-season championship, but it seemed to inspire the Commodores.
“Now it is the other side of the coin,” Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said. “Now, how are we going to respond to what happened? ... You feel good about yourself because you win and you play well, but the most important thing is what are we going to do with that? That is what it always is throughout a season. It’s a series of responses to successes or failures, and it really determines the success of your season.”
That’s where Georgia finds itself. The Bulldogs didn’t so much play poorly against South Carolina as they didn’t catch any breaks. Caldwell-Pope’s potential game-winning 3-pointer bounced off the back rim, as did another dozen or so shots.
“We missed a lot of shots around the goal, but they’re not trying to miss those shots,” Fox said. “We just have to keep trying to get them, and maybe they’ll go down next time.”
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