Tom Crean said Georgia “avoided a confidence crisis” when it beat Texas A&M on Saturday. The Bulldogs will seek to parlay that into something even greater Wednesday when they travel to Florida to take on the rival Gators.
The 63-48 win over the Aggies at Stegeman Coliseum snapped a four-game losing streak. A road win over the Gators (13-8, 5-3 SEC) would be Georgia’s first in conference play this season and get the Bulldogs (12-9, 2-6) a little further out of the SEC basement.
“It’s going to be a major challenge for us, but I’m excited about it,” Crean said before Georgia’s practice Monday afternoon. “I’m glad we’re going in there off a win because it gets our confidence back up. And we’ve got some guys that have won in there, so hopefully that helps. At the end of the day, it’s going to be a very tough SEC road game for us, like they all are.”
SEC wins have been hard to come by for Crean, period. Saturday’s victory was only his fourth in conference play in two seasons as the Bulldogs’ coach.
But Georgia actually has had some recent success at the O’Connell Center. It has won in its past two trips there, including 61-55 last season. To make it a third consecutive, the Bulldogs are going to have play as they did against the Aggies -- only better.
They were uncharacteristically strong on the boards Saturday, winning the rebounding war 44-34. But Georgia also turned the ball over 20 times. Somewhat miraculously, A&M turned those into only 11 points while losing the ball 17 times itself.
The Gators won’t be as generous. Their point guard, sophomore Andrew Nembhard, has some serious “handles.” The 6-foot-5 guard averages six assists per game and leads the SEC in assist-to-turnover ratio, at nearly 3-to-1. Meanwhile, Florida’s pace is one of the fastest in the country, often scoring within the first eight seconds of the shot clock.
“The biggest thing is we can’t go in there and turn the ball over,” Crean said. “We’ve got to do a fantastic job of taking care of the ball.”
The Gators also will have a size advantage. Kerry Blackshear, a 6-10 graduate transfer from Virginia Tech, leads the team in scoring (14.0 ppg) and rebounding (8.3). They bring in players off the bench who are 6-11, 6-10 and 6-9.
Georgia will, however, have the best overall player on the floor as usual in Anthony Edwards. A 6-5 guard, Edwards was chosen SEC freshman of the week for the second time this year after averaging 26 points and 12.5 rebounds in the past two games.
Part of Edwards’ recent success is a result of getting him more involved on defense. Edwards leads the nation in freshman scoring, at 19.3 points per game, but he has recently shown himself to be more of a force at on-the-ball defense and on the boards.
It has been a concerted effort. The Bulldogs are sending everybody to the backboard on every shot, with four blocking out and Edwards’ role to get the rebound. That’s resulted in 25 boards for Edwards in the past two games.
“When a shot goes up, we’ve got to have five guys around that glass,” Crean said. “That’s really the only way to win in this league. When it all gets said and done, rebounding is a huge part of all of this.”
Winning, of course, is the biggest part. That the Bulldogs just won a game allows them to head south with a positive mindset.
“It was really important for the team; there’s no question about that,” Crean said again. “The fact that they were able to carry out a game plan, to match up physically with Texas A&M and be able to do it with defense and rebounding was huge.”
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