Last season the Georgia Bulldogs tied Kentucky for second place in the SEC and missed the NCAA tournament.
Conference wins are coming harder this season — Georgia entered play Saturday in a four-way tie for fifth — but this team should make the Big Dance without strain. College basketball can be weird that way.
The SEC is better now. A league that landed only three teams in the field of 68 in 2014 figures to send a half-dozen, and Florida and Tennessee — two of last year’s three — mightn’t be among them. The Bulldogs might or might not be a better team than they were last February, but that’s not really the point.
Saturday’s game here was another installment in that ongoing confrontation of substance and style. The Bulldogs went long stretches looking ordinary, much of which was a function of Tennessee’s matchup zone. (Georgia coach Mark Fox called it a 1-1-3; Tennessee writers trace its lineage to something Rick Pitino drew up at Louisville.) After 39 minutes, the Bulldogs had made as many turnovers (20) as baskets.
“No other team plays a zone for 40 minutes,” Fox said, before recalling Syracuse. But here he drew the proper distinction: The Orange (New York division) cut off everything inside and dare you to shoot from distance; the SEC’s Big Orange essentially start four small forwards who blanket the perimeter.
“They’re good at it,” Fox said. “They know how to extend.”
The Volunteers didn’t lead over the final 30 1/2 minutes but never went away, not even on a day when Josh Richardson, their lone returning starter off last season’s Sweet 16 team, missed his first 11 shots and 12 of 13 in all. (Credit Kenny Gaines for giving Richardson a rough go.)
The Bulldogs clearly were the better team, but inside the final six seconds a rebound of a missed Kevin Punter free throw was pinballing — “It went through all six of us,” Georgia’s J.J. Frazier said, counting flailing bodies in the lane — before being seized by Reese, who shoveled it to Richardson for a 3-pointer to tie. It never had a chance. Georgia won 56-53. Whew.
Afterward Fox was asked if he’d remember this game (his 100th victory as Georgia’s coach) more for its blemishes. “It’s not about whether you have a girlfriend that’s pretty or a girlfriend that’s ugly,” he said. “It’s whether you have one.”
That life lesson aside, this season hasn’t been the smoothest glide. Wing Juwan Parker has a sore Achilles. Backup Kenny Paul Geno has a broken wrist. Forward Yante Maten missed two games because of a concussion after being hit by a car. Marcus Thornton, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, returned Saturday after missing two games (both losses) because of a concussion.
And the stuff that worked best last season — Fox tweaked his offense so that guards Gaines and Charles Mann could avail themselves of college basketball’s new don’t-touch rules by driving and getting fouled — hasn’t worked quite so well this time. Mann averaged 13.9 points a year ago; he’s averaging 11. Gaines, who was slowed early by mono and later by a sprained ankle, averages 11.7 points, down from 13.
According to publicist Tim Hix, Georgia leads the nation in free throws per game, but Mann’s percentage — he has taken 62 more foul shots than any other Bulldog — is unaccountably off (70.4 to 63.1). The emergence of Thornton in the post has diversified an offense that was something of a one-trick pony, but Georgia doesn’t handle the ball very well for a team that starts three seasoned guards.
As of Saturday morning, Georgia ranked next-to-last among 14 SEC teams in turnover margin and ninth in assist-to-turnover ratio. Saturday’s 20 turnovers — five apiece by Mann and Gaines — matched a season high and left Fox bemoaning “some bonehead plays. Let’s be honest: I didn’t make those plays in the fifth grade.”
Still, this is a clever team with a clever coach, and eventually the Bulldogs worked the game around to where you always figured it would land — with Frazier, who has NBA range, nailing three treys in a three-minute span over the Vols’ zone. That was enough for Georgia to exit, as Fox said, “feeling like we got a quality win.”
That’s the difference between this season and last. A year ago, the Bulldogs spent their non-conference schedule playing themselves off a bubble that hadn’t yet formed. Georgia was 6-6 when SEC play commenced, and the league offered few chances for rock-the-RPI victories. (It didn’t help that the Bulldogs finished 0-4 against Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee, with none of the games being staged at Stegeman Coliseum.)
This time Georgia took care of pre-New Year’s business, beating Colorado and Seton Hall and Kansas State, and in the league it has handled Florida, Ole Miss and now Tennessee. That’s a good enough worksheet — Georgia’s RPI is an excellent 24 — to go dancin’, even if this workmanlike bunch won’t be mistaken for the belle of the ball.
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