Georgia played Kentucky relatively well for about 35 minutes Saturday. The trouble is, college basketball games are 40 minutes long, and those other five were fairly awful for the Bulldogs.
The end result was a 70-58 win for the Wildcats and another Big Blue presence in the SEC tournament championship game. With the win over Georgia (19-13), Kentucky (24-9) improves to 38-2 in the conference semifinals. They’ll face No. 1 Florida at 3:15 p.m. Sunday in the title game.
“Kentucky’s a really good team, and to win the game we needed to play very complete basketball,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “We didn’t rebound enough and just couldn’t get enough stops in the second half to win the game.”
The Bulldogs badly wanted another crack at regal Kentucky after losing in Lexington without two of their best players (Kenny Gaines and Juwan Parker). But Georgia played a little wide-eyed in the first four minutes of Saturday’s tournament semifinal and fell behind 12-2.
The Bulldogs expended much time and great energy climbing up from that deficit, all the while having to overcome foul trouble. They got to within two points once and three twice, but could never get over the hump.
“We just didn’t start out as well as we wanted and we didn’t play like we wanted to at all,” said guard Charles Mann, who was limited to eight minutes in the first half because of foul trouble. “That’s what cost us the game. They just out-played us today.”
The Bulldogs didn’t roll over. They had gotten Kentucky’s lead down to 46-43 with 13:03 to go on a Gaines 3-pointer and a free throw by Nemanja Djurisic. But the Wildcats came back with a flurry of answers.
Kentucky’s Dakari Johnson came down with the rebound of a missed 3-point try and turned it into a put-back and a free throw. Johnson missed the free throw, but Willie Cauley-Stein gathered the rebound, and Aaron Harrison buried another 3-pointer off the outlet pass.
Djurisic clanged a much-too-quick 3-point try on the other end. Kentucky gathered the rebound, and James Young tipped in a missed 3-point try for a 7-0 run in 48 seconds. The Bulldogs called a timeout at 11:50 to stop the onslaught, but the game was essentially won by the Wildcats during that minute.
“That stretch in the second half killed us,” junior forward Marcus Thornton said. “We just didn’t make enough plays defending and rebounding.”
The Bulldogs were out-rebounded for only the fourth time in SEC play this season, and it was by a wide margin — 36 to 21. Gaines missed his first six shots of the game before rallying to lead the team with 13 points. Mann was Georgia’s only other double-figure scorer with 12.
Harrison was Georgia’s biggest problem. The 6-foot-6 freshman guard came in shooting 31 percent from 3-point range, but was 4-of-7 (57.1 percent) on Saturday and led the Wildcats with 22 points. His twin, Andrew Harrison, and Julius Randle added 12 apiece as Kentucky shot a healthy 51 percent from the floor.
It was Georgia’s 14th appearance in the SEC tournament semifinals, and the first since 2008, when the Bulldogs made their miraculous run in the “Tornado Tournament.” The loss likely seals Georgia’s fate for an NIT bid.
That is, unless Kentucky’s John Calipari is on the NCAA selection committee. He stumped for the Bulldogs and other SEC teams after the game.
“Georgia should be in,” the Wildcats’ coach said. “Tennessee should be in. Arkansas should be on the edge. I mean, they beat us twice. “For some reason, (the SEC) doesn’t get the credit it should. Georgia won seven out their last 10 games; you talk about how you play at the end.”
Fox did some soap-box arguing on behalf of Georgia’s basketball resume as well. But for the Bulldogs’ players, their hopes obviously rested on bigger things.
“We wanted to win this game and play for the championship,” Mann said. “We’ve just got to move on to whatever’s next. Of course, I want to keep on playing, but who knows. We’ll find out in the next couple of days. I guess we’ve just got to wait.”
